\',\\^ 






■ i'' ' 






'.•.:> !'i!l'HI!K'. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 



THE PROBLEM OF THE 
NERVOUS CHILD 



BY 
ELIDA EVANS 



INTRODUCTION BY 

C. G. JUNG, M.D., LL.D. 



*' He who reads to criticise seeks only to 

hide his own defects, but he who reads 

for understanding will find the truth." 

Ancient Maxim 




NEW YORK 

PODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1920 



A^ 






Copyright, 1920, by 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 



4 



■<^o^ 



Q%e <fiuinn & Soben Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 



APR i3l92U 
0)C(.A565540 



INTRODUCTION 

By De. C. G. Jung, 

Zurich, 

Switzerland. 

I HAVE read the manuscript of Mrs. Evans' 
book, The Problem of the Nervous Child, with 
great pleasure and interest. Mrs. Evans' knowl- 
edge of her subject matter is based on the solid 
foundation of practical experience, an experience 
gained in the difficult and toilsome treatment and 
education of nervous children. Whoever has had 
to deal with nervous children knows what an 
amount of patience, as well as skill, is needed to 
guide a child out of a wrong pathological atti- 
tude into a normal life. This book, as the reader 
can see on almost every page, is the fruit of an 
extended work in the field of neuroses and abnor- 
mal characters. Despite the fact that there are 
numbers of books on education, there are 
very few that occupy themselves with a child's 
most intimate problems in such a careful and 
painstaking way. It is self-evident that this con- 
tribution will be of great value to any one inter- 
ested in educational questions. But the physi- 



INTRODUCTION 

dan should be particularly indebted to the au- 
thor, as her book will be a valuable co-operation 
in the fight against the widespread evil of neu- 
roses in adults. /More and more the neurologist 
of today realizes the fact that the origin of the 
nervousness of his patients is very rarely of re- 
cent date, but that it traces back to the early im- 
pressions and developments in childhood. There 
lies the source of many later nervous diseases. 
Most of the neuroses originate from a wrong psy- 
chological attitude which hinders the adjustment 
to the environment or to the individual's own re- 
quirements. This wrong psychological position 
which is at the bottom of almost every neurosis 
has, as a rule, been built up during the course of 
years and very often began in early childhood as 
a consequence of incompatible familiar influences. 
Knowing this, Mrs. Evans lays much stress on 
the parent's mental attitude and its importance 
for the child's psychology. One easily overlooks 
the enormous power of imitation in children. 
Parents too easily content themselves with the 
belief that a thing hidden from the child can- 
not influence it. They forget that the infantile 
imitation is less concerned with the action than 
with the parent's state of mind from which the 
action emanates. I have frequently observed 
children who were particularly influenced by cer- 
tain unconscious tendencies of the parents and, 
in such cases, I have often advised the treatment 

vi 



INTRODUCTION 

of the mother rather than of the child. Through 
the enlightenment of the parents, their wrong in- 
fluences can at least be avoided, and thus much 
can be done for the prevention of later neuroses 
in the children. 

The author particularly insists upon the im- 
portance of watching the manifestations of the 
sexual instinct in childhood. Any one concerned 
with the education of abnormal children will con- 
firm the existence and the frequency of sexual 
symptoms in these children. Despite the fact that 
sexual activity does not belong to the infantile 
age, it frequently manifests itself in a symptom- 
atic way, viz. as a symptom of abnormal develop- 
ment. An abnormal development does not pro- 
vide sufficient opportunity for the normal display 
of the child's energies. Thus, the normal outlet 
being blocked, the energy accumulates itself and 
forcibly seeks an abnormal outlet in premature 
and perverted sexual interests and activities. 
Infantile sexuality is the most frequent symptom 
of a morbid psychological attitude. According to 
my view, it is wrong to consider sexual phenom- 
ena in early childhood as the expression of an 
organic disposition; most of the cases are due to 
an environment not fitting the child's psychologi- 
cal nature. The attitude of the child toward life 
is certainly determined by the inherited disposi- 
tion, but only to a certain extent; on the other 
side it is the result of the immediate parental in- 

vii 



INTRODUCTION 

flnences and of the educational measures. While 
the inherited disposition cannot be changed, 
these latter influences can be improved by suitable 
methods, and thus the original unfavourable dis- 
position can be overcome. Mrs. Evans' book 
shows the way, and how to treat even the most 
intricate cases. 

KirsNACHT, near ZiJBlCH, 
October, 1919. 



VUl 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 
I 


Statement of the Pboblem 


PAGB 

1 


II 


The Development of Eepression 


. 31 


III 


Symbolic Thought . . . . 


41 


IV 


The Child and the Adult . 


. 62 


V 


Mental Behaviour of the Child 


. 84 


VI 


Defence Reactions . . . . 


113 


VII 


The Parent Complex . 


. 130 


VIII 


Buried Emotions .... 


. 160 


IX 


Child Training . . . 


. 181 


X 


Muscle Erotism . . . . 


. 195 


XI 


The Tyrant Child . . . . 


222 


XII 


Teaching of Right and Wrong . 


. 246 


XIII 


Self and Character . 


. 269 




Index 


. 297 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 



THE PROBLEM OF THE 
NERVOUS CHILD 

CHAPTER I 

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

The purpose of this book is to aid those parents 
who in the training or education of their children 
have arrived at the point where the methods al- 
ready used have proved inadequate. The child 
does not respond normally to their most earnest 
endeavours, and the parent, if he or she has 
thought much about the matter, has become 
slightly perplexed, if not actually desperate. I 
have aimed, not at adding another to the already 
Long list of textbooks explaining psychoanalytical 
treatment for nervous troubles, but only at pro- 
viding a simple introduction to the subject from 
the special point of view of the relation between 
parent and child. My attempt to present so large 
a subject in so small a compass will require me to 
make statements in a seemingly dogmatic man- 
ner, without supporting them with proofs, which 
I should, but for lack of space, be most happy to 
give. "With few exceptions, I have avoided the 
use of technical terms, which are almost neces- 

1 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

sarily used in describing the ideas fundamental 
to psychoanalysis. The book, therefore, is ad- 
dressed primarily to the steadily increasing num- 
ber of parents who are sufficiently courageous 
(and never has courage been so essential in every 
sphere of life as it is at the present day) to over- 
come their prejudices against scientific methods 
of managing children. 

One of the practical results of the newer psy- 
chology of the unconscious is the discovery of a 
means, never before systematically used, of 
arousing the child's interest in his school environ- 
ment ; another, which is much more striking in its 
novelty, a means of adapting a child to the home 
environment. This seems the more strange, as 
it is thought by many that, of all places, the home 
is the one where the child is expected to be the 
best fitted. Most of the students of child-training, 
at any rate that part of them for whom this book 
is intended, will have had no scientific study of 
the laws of human development but will have tried 
in a more or less systematic way, to profit by the 
lessons of their own childhood in guiding youth 
along the difficult path of infancy and the still 
more arduous path of adolescence. And if it is 
desirable to use as few technical terms as possi- 
ble, it is still more desirable to avoid abstruse 
discussions. I shall, therefore, give only the end 
results of present-day research and observation 
on the subject, with examples of cases. 

2 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

THE NEGATIVE CHARACTER 

These cases will show that every child has a 
negative character as well as a positive or affirma- 
tive one. The child takes pleasure not only in 
complying with the suggestions of parents and 
others but also in going contrary to them. This 
universal tendency to go against advice or direc- 
tion is what I mean by this negative character. 
To be sure the negative character of the child is 
of great value to him in his contact with the world 
in later life; but it is most important that the 
parents should not be the most frequent object 
of this negative activity. The parents, on the 
other hand, should know how to manage the in- 
stinctive resistance of their children, a resistance 
which is essential to the rightly developed char- 
acter of all humans. Its manifestations are 
therefore inevitable in children, who are the most 
natural of humans. The parents who see this 
trait as a necessary trait of all character, will 
realize that it has only to be directed from the 
home outward to the world to become one of the 
most valuable traits possessed by the child. They 
will, therefore, be the more anxious to understand 
how the expression of this negative character in 
the home can be diminished by the child's home 
training. For in the home, where peace and har- 
mony should reign, it is desirable to have as little 
friction and antagonism as possible. 

3 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOIJiS CHH^D 

There is a reason why the negative character 
of the child is sometimes brought out and devel- 
oped to the uttermost in some homes, while the 
atmosphere of others does not furnish the condi- 
tions for its growth. This cause frequently lies in 
the actions of the parents, in their treatment of 
the child. Most parents, however, and most teach- 
ers, who ought to be prepared on this point, as 
soon as the information contained in this and 
similar books ^ can be assimilated, are profoundly 
ignorant, through no fault of their own, of the 
way in which their own actions affect the children 
under their care. 



As soon as the child can use words he is almost 
universally, by parent and teacher alike, supposed 
to be able to reason with the thoughts which these 
words represent to adults — a very illogical sup- 
position for the adult to make. If the child's 
physical ability to say ^^ ethics," ** moral princi- 
ples, '^ ^* psychology,'' ^^epistemology," implied 
an understanding of what the terms meant, then 
and only then would teacher and parents have a 
right to expect a child's acts to be moral. But the 
parent, acting with an inevitable unreason, ex- 
pects in the child an understanding of the thmgs 

1 Compare Wilfrid Lay: Man*s Unconscious Conflict (N. Y., 
1917) and The Child's Unconscious Mind (1919). 



4 



/ 



STATEMENT OF THE PEOBLEM 

denoted by words which the child himself can only 
hear and pronounce. Now and then this discrep- 
ancy flashes into momentary clearness to the pa- 
rent who hears a child innocently repeat some 
profanity or obscenity which he may have picked 
up on the street. 

The first signs of interest and activity in sur- 
roundings are shown by the asking of innumera- 
ble questions. They are simple and disconnected. 
Where? Who? Why? How? The limited ex- 
perience of the child causes much repetition. 
Words are learned before meanings and accepted 
uses of words. Mere perception is intellectually 
developed into conception. If in answering these 
questions we go far ahead of the child's experi- 
ence of life, our words have no meaning for 
him. Here is a pitfall for the unwary parent 
or teacher who is ignorant of the slow growth 
of the child's power to think. A parent often 
mistakes for real knowledge a child's facility in 
picking up words and his apt attempts at using 
them. 

The child has eyes and sees not, has ears and 
hears not, simply because he has not had the ex- 
perience which alone constitutes true seeing and 
hearing. For this reason there arises a very pe- 
culiar and generally unappreciated condition. 
The child seems to understand because he can 
repeat words. Therefore the parent, having 
caused the child to learn and repeat a number of 

5 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 

words which express high moral aims, fatuously 
thinks the child understands and wishes to attain 
those aims. 

An illustration is seen when parents are trying 
to arouse a feeling of repentance in a child, who 
has wilfully disobeyed, and insist that the re- 
pentance be shown in a set phrase of ^ * I am very 
sorry, please forgive me for being so naughty." 
There has been no change of heart in the child 
nor greater understanding of moral responsi- 
bility, but the parents usually feel they have won 
a great victory and are ignorant of the fact that 
the child has not meant every word he repeated. 
When he is again allowed to go out and play he 
rarely shows any desire to better his future con- 
duct. If there has been punishment he goes out 
to find something to smash or to beat up his com- 
panions, but if he has a gentler nature and the 
life current does not flow so swiftly within him, 
his bruised feelings are too sore for action. And 
such quiet reactions are mistaken for repentance. 
As I look back over the youthful years of a gen- 
eration ago, I find that the boy or girl who would 
really say '^I ought not to have done that. My 
parents know what is best for me and I will never 
do it again'' has often been dissipated in college 
life, and morally weak. Through thoughtlessness 
parents acquire a habit of taking it for granted 
that the child should put a high valuation on the 
parents' services, which, however, the child can- 

6 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

not do, as he has not yet sufficient reasoning 
power to appreciate them. 

The mental disposition of the child, really so 
little understood by parents, is entirely deter- 
mined by his very early environment, unless he is 
physically burdened by afflictions visited upon him 
by the sins of his forefathers. This disposition is 
composed of a veritable potpourri of family influ- 
ences, and is frequently a great obstacle to the 
individual in his endeavour to accommodate him- 
self to the world outside of the family. It is the 
unquestioned duty of the parent so to influence 
the child, not alone by words but also by the much 
more potent actions of everyday conduct, that 
his natural cravings and instinctive activities 
may be guided to a conscious purpose and intelli- 
gent action, and that he may be able to climb over 
the family environment and attain the essential 
characteristics of an independent man. 

IMITATION 

The discrepancy between the child's ready use 
of words, the meanings of which he does not un- 
derstand, and his great difficulty in grasping thei 
moral relations of his acts is explained by the 
fact that his first means of fitting himself into his 
social surroundings are imitative. Even we 
adults, when suddenly set in a novel social en- 
vironment, are likely to feel awkward in our 

7 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 

anxiety to appear experienced. We carefully 
watch other people and do as they do. Not all 
imitation, however, is deliberate. An example is 
the contagious cough that runs around the con- 
gregation in church, or the fit of yawning that one 
bored or sleepy person catches from another. We 
may be surprised to find ourselves thus coughing 
or yawning, and so far is it from being intentional 
that we may find it difficult to stop. 

In the child imitation is even more spontaneous. 
It has indeed a very important function to per- 
form, as it puts the present-day child in posses- 
sion of a degree of proficiency in various forms 
of activity which he would not be able to acquire, 
unless he had them before his eyes in actual oper- 
ation. These are things which the race has 
needed and taken long ages to develop. But the 
child, seeing them, can imitate them readily, or 
at least can attain in a short time a proficiency in 
actions which have been brought to perfection 
only by evolution during the development of the 
race. 

The remark is often made that children in one 
family, even with the same bringing up, are so 
different. Twins of the same sex, though perhaps 
having strong facial resemblance when children, 
will in later life develop different tendencies. 
Observation shows us that in large families chil- 
dren are not treated in the same way. It is not 
possible for pare^rits to do so, Parents are inflU" 

8 ■ 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

enced in the treatment of children by the fact that 
each hour of the day brings to the parents varying 
emotions, disappointments, joys and sorrows. 
The child's hourly experience in the home thus 
depends both upon the reactions which the pa- 
rents have made to their surroundings when they 
were children, and upon the effect on the mother 
and father of the surroundings which the child 
may or may not have comprehended. Thus ai\ 
accident to parents which the child may have seen, 
but in which he has not himself been injured, such 
as the runaway of a horse, may have the effect 
of causing the child ever after to dislike horses. 
Also it may have the other effect of making the 
parents over-careful about the child's experience 
with horses. Or the parents' attitude toward 
^ach other may have the effect of determining the 
sunny or cloudy temperament of the child, a qual- 
ity which is likely to persist into later life and be- 
come a mental habit. 

Another factor in the home influence of the 
child is that of prenatal conditions. The mother, 
through some unpleasant experience during her 
pregnancy, may have formed an unpleasant as- 
sociation with the child which will affect her sub- 
sequent treatment of it. Or financial troubles 
may have occurred to make the child an unex- 
pected burden. Again, the carrying out of paren- 
tal theories of bringing up children may be at- 
tempted with a first child, and with later children 

9 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

abandoned, on account of lack of perseverance, or 
other human weakness. The father, remembering 
the escapades of his own youth, is frequently on 
the watch to nip in the bud any indication of such 
actions on the part of his son who, born with a 
different innate disposition and a totally differ- 
ent mental environment, and not knowing the 
father's suspicions, must either use violence in 
breaking away from the tight grasp of over- 
powering authority or become a weakling and a 
failure. 

The parents' problem is to impart their knowl- 
edge and experience in such a way as to encourage 
the child's intelligence and not to balk it with pro- 
hibitions; to discipline it and not to repress it; 
to train it up, and not to choke it with their own 
fears. The child's mental development should 
neither be discouraged nor allowed to run wild. 
How best to train the child's mind morally and 
intellectually, thus producing the finest character, 
will be more clearly understood, if the parents are 
able to grasp the fundamental principles of men- 
tal behaviour. 

The truth of the old adage that example is bet- 
ter than precept is rarely realized by parents. 
Not only do we appeal, in teaching any dexterity, 
such as penmanship, mainly to the example of a 
perfectly written word to be copied, but in golf 
or tennis, for instance, one learns more from the 
coaching of a professional than from any number 

10 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

of textbooks that may be read. Furthermore, 
the proverb refers chiefly to the tendency of ex- 
ample to call forth an impulsive imitation that is 
largely determmed by admiration, A parent's 
attempt to inculcate pure utterance is fruitless if 
he has the accent of a Cockney, or to enforce clean 
hands and other personal neatness if the parents' 
hands are unwashed and their house is in disor- 
der. Children imitate parents without being 
aware of it and even unobserved by the parents. 
Possibly the children imitate the parents out of 
sheer adoration, and in this case there should be 
some excellence in the model to be adored. The 
parent who is unable to understand, and to ac- 
commodate his ways to his children must either 
learn what is wrong with himself that his child 
does not thrive, or the child will come into painful 
conflict with a world of external reality outside of 
the home. The child with a wrong home environ- 
ment will seldom fit into the world, and will have 
one painful experience after another to show him 
his faulty adaptation to life 's requirements. The 
parent must study himself as the gardener studies 
the soil, temperature and climatic conditions, and 
must observe the child as the gardener observes 
the plants during every period of their growth. 
He must know as intimately as possible the na- 
ture of both, the plant and its environment, in 
order to bring it to perfect blossom and plenteous 
fruit. 

11 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

PSYCHOAN-ALYSIS 

The preparatory psychoanalytic work of tak- 
ing a nervous child's history in clinics or in pri- 
vate practice shows that even before the fifth 
year of the child's life may appear the first indi- 
cations of a conflict which is later to take place 
between the group of parental wishes and the 
child's struggles to establish his individual iden- 
tity — a conflict which must be the cause of the 
nervousness that has led the parent to take the 
child to the psychoanalyst. 

In the following chapters, by relating several 
cases which have come under my care and instruc- 
tion by the analytic method, I hope to show how 
the parents in following out their ideals of train- 
ing or education have obstructed their children's 
adaptation to social environment. Many parents 
observe in their children acts that they cannot un- 
derstand. Moreover, even their most successful 
experiences are accompanied by a number of fail- 
ures in either the school^ home or business life of 
some of their children. One boy does not get on 
as he should, another deteriorates in character or 
bodily health under what seems the same treat- 
ment that improves his brother. In such cases 
the parents are tempted to consider the boy's nat- 
ural badness or dullness at fault, while the more 
advantageous course would be not only to study 

12 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

their own methods, but also to make a careful 
diagnosis of the boy's nature. 

During an analy^tic treatment the analyst is 
comparable to a bridge over which the patient 
escapes from the troubles originating in his 
childhood into another sphere of thought where 
the point of view is completely changed. The 
tears, restlessness, general unhappiness and ina- 
bility to fit into the niche where he has been placed 
by birth or circumstances, give place to an en- 
tirely new mental situation. Through analysis 
the patient is shown that life is like a country 
where he must pass through varying degrees of 
heat, cold and humidity. To the child, especially, 
life in the workaday world is indeed often very 
cold and causes him to feel that no one loves him. 
Home life, on the contrary, may have been very 
warm, loading him with caresses, with privileges, 
with toys and playmates. The home influence 
may have projected itself abroad in travel and 
in whatever else the fond parents (judging of the 
child's needs by their own desires) can think of 
to help the child through his difficulties. In such 
instances the parents' inevitable judging of the 
child by themselves does the child much harm, for 
the circumstances are so different. When an 
adult, for example, is needing rest to recuperate 
from his output of energy, he is likely to require 
the child to be quiet, although the child is needing 

13 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 

a larger opportunity to use his accumulated and 
increasing energy. 

SUPERHEATED FAMILY ATMOSPHERE 

Not only is the home life of some children un- 
duly warm on account of excessive shelter, but 
that of other children is too cold. The feeling of 
coldness from which the child often suffers is 
caused either by a lack of sympathy and under- 
standing on the part of the parents, or by the 
parents* being too much occupied with their own 
problems to lower their minds to the child's level, 
and merely envying the child because he seems to 
be free from care. In this journey of life, which 
we must travel with each child, we must ourselves 
be f arseeing. We must watch for the obstructions 
which he is apt to encounter and, as soon as he 
sees them, we must explain them to him, being 
very careful not to explain more than he sees. 
We have been over the path before and know 
what is coming, but his mind is too much occupied 
with the wonders around him to look ahead. He 
must travel slowly to see fully. He must develop 
slowly so that the mind and body keep pace to- 
gether. 

Just as the child suffers because of instincts 
aroused too early, or from a mind stimulated with 
knowledge it cannot assimilate, and as the body 
suffers indigestion from too much and too rich 
food, so a kind of moral indigestion results from 

14 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

appetites that are awakened hut which cannot be 
gratified. Like a hothouse plant forced to early 
blossom, the precocious child may be admired for 
being so *^ bright'* when so young, but like the 
Easter rose bush and lilies, he stops budding. 
Some unwise college professors, in experimental 
work, have forced the minds of their children to a 
remarkable development so that the adolescent 
was doing the work of an adult in mathematics 
and philosophy. They proudly announced to the 
world the great discovery that a child's mind 
should receive intensive training beginning as 
early as four years old, because those early years 
are the most receptive and the mind is free from 
the problems of later life. After several years we 
learn that the end of those abnormal develop- 
ments has been an attempt to restore the ex- 
hausted energy in a nerve sanitarium, or by a 
term in jail. 

As I have intimated above, the conduct of a 
child follows a pattern usually formed by the en- 
vironmental influences which are operative before 
the fifth year, a pattern which may be slightly 
modified by experiences accumulated thereafter. 
At adolescence deep physical changes, which have 
been going on, cumulate in making a man or a 
woman out of the body, but the mind frequently 
develops at a different rate. There comes a great 
longing for freedom to try the new-found power 
of manhood or womanhood. Then the parents see 

15 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 

in the boy or girl the **know-it-alP' attitude (so 
trying to the home circle), feelings of superiority 
to authority or criticism and sudden paying of at- 
tention to personal appearance, with an increased 
interest in the opposite sex. **The sudden awak- 
ening of feelings and passions, redundant energy, 
rapid mental processes, scintillating wit, as in 
plays upon words and phrases and unique ideas, 
hopefulness and enthusiasm, vigorous and reten- 
tive memory, hasty decision, persistence to the 
point of obstinacy, scorn of obstacles, represent 
the attitude toward a world opening to the ex- 
panding vision as new and strange, and reveals 
a crisis in growth the significance of which is not 
to be underestimated. ' ' 

These symptoms of new life springing up in 
the child should be welcomed by the parents as 
indicating that another man is being added to the 
great army of life. It only needs the first love 
affair to show that the age of puberty is being 
successfully passed. I shall explain later the 
consequence of the adolescent age not being 
successfully passed through. From research in 
that field we have learned that age is not properly 
counted by years, but by the all-around develop- 
ment of the individual. 

INTELLIGENCE TESTS 

At the present time a great deal of attention has 
been attracted to the intelHgence tests adopted 

16 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

by several universities in this country to sup- 
plement or take the place' of the regular entrance 
examinations. This grading of general intelli- 
gence has been already carried to quite a scien- 
tific accuracy, but the all-around development 
just mentioned is essentially different from the 
intelligence measured by these tests, and should 
not be confused with it. The psychical develop- 
ment to which I refer here, may be absent in per- 
sons whose intelligence is shown by the tests to 
be of the highest order. On the other hand, the 
psychical development concerns the intimate per- 
sonal relationships of the individual, primarily to 
the members of his or her own family. Many 
people quite adult in physical size and strength 
have yet the mental conduct of infants, not neces- 
sarily with regard to practical affairs but with 
regard to their emotional reactions toward their 
personal environment. In the intelligence tests ^ 
very definite means of demarcation are obtained, 
such that it is possible to say that an individual 
is exactly ten years old, mentally, twelve years, 
or fourteen years, or an average or superior 
adult. Beyond these classes it is impossible to 
differentiate people with regard to intelligence 
alone. In the matter of the psychical development, 
however, it might almost be said that there are an 
infinite number of gradations between the indi- 

lAs described in The Measurem^t Of Intelligence bj^ Louig 
M, Terman, New York, 1916. 

17 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

vidual who is emotionally an infant and the one 
who is a fully developed adult. 

One sees many old infants, who go around un- 
attended, being physically anywhere from fifteen 
to eighty calendar years of age, but in initiative 
and self-reliance merely babies. The fact that 
they usually enjoy poor health attracts the atten- 
tion and interest of some one, who seeks to make 
them more comfortable. If they marry they fre- 
quently become the mothers or fathers of nervous 
children and are likely to wreck the marital hap- 
piness of any normal spouse to whom they may 
be linked. These elderly infants who have been 
seeking infantile means of satisfaction all their 
lives are seen in many strata of society. We have 
examples in the men who live in clubs. Short of 
being rocked to sleep their wants are anticipated 
and attended to in the most comfortable fashion, 
the men always holding a pipe or a cigar in the 
mouth for something to suck on. Women, too, 
find infantile satisfaction in playing bridge or 
giving their children entirely into the care of 
nurse-maids with as inefficient oversight as is the 
carelessness of little girls who play with dolls. 
People with fads are playing with life as children 
play at living, and I have been surprised to find 
that men and women, retiring to the life of a nun- 
nery or monastery for the sole purpose of avoid- 
ing the responsibilities of living, yet think them- 
selves examples of goodness. In them we see a 

18 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

regression to lives of meditation and stagnation, 
virtually a return to a prenatal existence. Surely 
there is greater glory in meeting and conquering 
temptations than in hiding away from them. 



EARLY INFLUENCES 

In assisting at the psychological examination 
of several thousand men in a city lodging house I 
was interested to observe the retarded mental de- 
velopment shown in the history of the alcoholics. 
There was usually a mother or sister who had 
made a comfortable home for the patient. *^I 
kept steady work until after her death, and then 
I had no one to care if I went to the devil, and 
the barroom was always warm with something 
to eat and drink, to warm up a fellow's spirits." 
When asked why they had not married, the reply 
was the usual one: **Well, if I could have found 
a girl who was worth marrying I would have been 
glad to marry, but I never could find the right 
girl, and yet I wanted to marry to have a home 
of my own.'' This really meant that if he could 
have found a girl who would have been a mother 
to him, and cared for him as tenderly, he would 
have married, but the girls had also revealed 
their wishes to find in him more than he had to 
give of love and sympathy. He was really unfit 
to marry because he wanted all the sympathy in 
the home. And so we see the character of the 

19 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 

alcoliolics undermined by the considerate mother 
care which only a child needs, and we find the man 
of adult years giving evidence of being a victim 
of the early environmental influences. While ap- 
parently an adult, he is, in the unconscious, still 
a child. 

The efforts of a child to express its individu- 
ality are not welcomed by the parents, who are, 
on the contrary, sorely puzzled and think by 
stricter discipline still to retain and guide the 
youthful life which is trying so hard to break 
away from the parent stem.^ One of the ques- 
tions asked of the nervous patients in the psycho- 
logical clinic of Johns Hopkins University at Bal- 
timore: *^At what age occurred the emancipation 
from the parents?" brought out the interesting 
fact that in the alcoholics, epileptics and other 
neurotic patients, a strong family influence had 
existed long after the adolescent period. Occa- 
sionally parents are inclined to feel that they 
own their children body and soul and that their 
children are created for the sole purpose of pro- 
viding for the parents in their old age. This 
great war has taught us that we are unable to 
control our children's lives, and that our children 
must themselves secure the freedom of all the 



1 Novelists have realized the baneful effects of undue parental 
authority following preconceived notions. George Meredith in 
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel vividly depicts the tragic 
results of bringing up an only son on a " system " in isolation 
with a view to keeping him uncontaminated by the world. 

20 



STATEMENT OF THE PEOBLEM 

world for mankind to live in. While too much 
discipline was fatal to freedom, on the other hand, 
too much freedom, without proper training in its 
use, is also destroying life, as in Eussia. Our 
children are a trust, and are created for the 
preservation of the race. The life that lives for 
self-preservation only, wants everything for it- 
self, is jealous of all who have more success of 
whatever kind, that thinks a child is for the abso- 
lute use of the home interests, is infantile and go- 
ing against the instincts of the human race. On 
the other hand, a human life living solely for race 
preservation is unthinkable as a part of social 
life. In truth, one of these is quite as anti-social 
as the other. 

THE COUNTRY CHILD 

The child, born and bred in the country, and 
especially on a farm has, other things being equal, 
an immense advantage. He has had plenty of 
space to roam in, seeing the farm animal life and 
learning nature's lessons in the cleanest and most 
wholesome way. The city-bred child, crowded in 
an apartment, hotel or even in a private house, is 
robbed of many of his rights, the greatest of which 
is the right to be a child, with dirty hands and 
face, noisy with his playmates, and with an om- 
nivorous appetite, even to the stealing of goodies 
from the pantry. The ** barefoot boy with cheek 

21 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

of tan,'* tousled hair, straw hat and tnrned-up 
pantaloons was not a nervous child. His father 
and mother were too busy with their day's work 
to surround the child with an atmosphere of 
^^don'ts/' *' musts" and cleanliness. He played 
hard all day, brought into use all his muscles, 
shouted to his comrades, acted upon the impulse 
of the moment with the freedom all children need. 
Play is but a preparation for life and the child's 
play imitates work. The country boy with his 
chores to do night and morning, bringing eggs 
from the nests, feeding the chickens, driving the 
cows to and from pasture, bringing in wood for 
the kitchen fire, learns self-control in the natural 
way. He does not suffer from the repression of 
the city child who has the same wishes and im- 
pulses to roam unmolested. In his roamings the 
city child meets many temptations, much knowl- 
edge is presented to him before he has asked for 
information, and life unfolds so rapidly that he 
cannot develop in the sure and leisurely manner 
of the country boy. 

UNWHOLESOME CITY LIFE 

Largely owing to these problems of the crowded 
city life, through whose perils parents with diffi- 
culty guide their children to a strong manhood, 
science has come forward to their help. In the 
methods and teachings of psychoanalysis, parents 

22 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

will learn that their anxiety is to be relieved, and 
that their child is not a case for discipline or 
punishment, but is sick in mind and soul, as is 
the body when in a fever. At first glance this 
may not seem to be much relief, because it is 
apparently easier to punish and to discipline a 
fault than it is to cure a disease, and because 
the punishment is felt to be both appropriate and 
necessary; but a study of the mental development, 
conscious and unconscious, of the child will show 
that the treatment of the child ^s peccadilloes by 
punishment is absolutely futile. The view of the 
nervous or incorrigible child as a child mentally 
diseased is alarming only if there is no known 
cure for the disorder. But when it is clearly seen 
that there is a plain and simple curative pro- 
cedure which any parent can follow, the situation 
is immediately relieved of a very unpleasant ten- 
sion by the removal of blame from the child and 
the placing of the parents' activity where it be- 
longs. After these newer theories become known 
through the restoration of children to a more 
normal adjustment, the race will slowly but surely 
feel the results in better self-control and stronger 
reactions to life. 



PSYCHOAl^ALYTIC METHOD 

The theories of psychoanalysis are distorted 
by so much inexperience and ignorance, by impu- 

23 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHD^D 

dent and fraudulent pretenders, both medical and 
otherwise, as scarcely to be recognizable. In- 
stead of placing the strongest, cleanest ideals be- 
fore life for inspiration, these quacks tear down 
all ideals, oftentimes with licentious and immoral 
teaching. Psychoanalysis is a cleansing process, 
separating the wheat from the chaff. It teaches 
the necessity of truth, enabling a person to dis- 
tinguish the good from the bad influence in his 
own life. It is educational in that it imparts a 
knowledge of logical reasoning, and much general 
information is usually imparted along the lines 
of history and literature. Psychoanalysis, or an- 
alytical psychology, means an analysis of the 
mind, that is, a separating and studying of the 
thoughts of an individual to discover the under- 
lying motive, the existence of which is unknown 
to him, to trace them back to their origin by meth- 
ods of association. It is to be understood that 
ideas, which occur in this procedure where the 
person who is being analyzed sits in quiet, com- 
fortable surroundings in the presence of the psy- 
choanalyst alone, are not governed in their ap- 
pearance by definite purpose. The patient sits 
quietly and simply lets his mind run on. It is be- 
lieved that in these circumstances the unconscious 
is supplying at least the motive force which 
brings these presentations into consciousness. 
They are, therefore, called *^ descendants of the 
repressed.'' By this so-called ''free association 

24 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

method^' one thought arouses another thought, or 
group of thoughts, bringing up in turn still others, 
and so on, until after careful listening and silent 
comparison of the words of the patient, the ana- 
lyst can discover a ^^seed thought'' from which 
all the complex mental underbrush has grown. 
These comparisons might be likened to a kind of 
surveying by which the surveyor locates and 
measures the distance of a point which is to him 
inaccessible, a measurement which, by the way, 
requires all the experience of a trained psycho- 
analyst to make. A complete doctrine of mind 
and soul would include the consideration of many 
topics, such as that of immortality, lying outside 
the range of psychology, as we shall understand 
the term. In this work we have to do with mental 
happenings or operations, as we find them in our- 
selves, namely, desires, emotions, acts of per- 
ceiving, thinking, deciding and other actual men- 
tal events and their conditions. Psychology is 
thus the study of the way in which minds behave 
at all levels of the conscious and unconscious. In 
a psychoanalytic treatment, on the other hand, we 
help the person to change that behaviour from in- 
fantile to adult mental behaviour. 

In many ways the mind of the child behaves 
differently from that of the adult. There is pro- 
gressive development from the helplessness of 
infancy to the relative independence of maturity. 
From this viewpoint the aims and methods of the 

25 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHttD 

psychoanalytic observer do not differ fundamen- 
tally from those of chemistry or physics, and jnst 
as in other sciences, the results of this procedure 
may be invalidated by careless observation, by 
imperfect analysis and by rash generalizations. 
In both chemistry and psychoanalysis, observa- 
tion, and the inference from it, present special 
difficulties due to the material with which we 
have to deal. But those difficulties do not free 
us from the necessity of acquiring first-hand ac- 
quaintance with the facts. Furthermore, the psy- 
choanalyst is interested in things as they are, as 
well as in things as they ought to he, 

THE LIBIDO 

The fact that our thoughts and feelings cannot 
be measured by a foot rule does not make them 
any less real. A spell of melancholy, lawlessness, 
tears or any form of unhappiness is a fact to a 
child or an adult. In some respects the human 
soul in any one of these states is comparable to 
an ocean liner slowly steaming through a fog. 
The driving force of the individual, as well as 
the ship, moves more slowly in a melancholy or 
tearful condition. There is a fear of danger 
ahead, a danger unseen and unknown to the indi- 
vidual but felt emotionally. This emotional force 
or urge is in every form of life, whether vegetable 
or animal. It is life itself. We cannot say that 

26 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

the vegetable kingdom has an emotional urge, but 
we may call it a psychic urge. 

** Every clod feels a stir of might, . . . 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." 

This thing we call life, which sends forth the 
leaves and grass, sends the bird out of the nest, 
weans the kitten from the mother cat, sends ani- 
mals many miles away, going days without food, 
facing danger of destruction, in order to find a 
mate, is the same force which fills the adolescent 
child with wishes to assert his own individuality, 
to overcome all restraint and authority. It is this 
force which brings the first love affair to the boy 
or girl — Ei most important event, for it marks the 
passing of childhood. We call this force the 
libido. As its existence in the soul is the most 
vital fact in all life, normal and abnormal, so its 
whereabouts is the most important problem to 
solve in all cases of nervousness; and so we 
hope that the reader will clearly understand the 
meaning of the term. It may seem strange to be 
talking about the whereabouts of the libido de- 
fined as a life force, but it is a real condition and 
is otherwise expressed by saying from what kinds 
of activities the individual gets his satisfaction. 
**His satisfaction" implies that everybody does 

27 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

get some sort of satisfaction from whatever he 
is doing with his life force. It is ^'his'' satisfac- 
tion because what he is doing is his act more than 
any one's else. In cases of nervousness, however, 
the libido is found to be occupied in, and the indi- 
vidual to be gaining his satisfaction from, his 
unconscious thoughts and other activities which, 
not being suited for social living have been re- 
pressed into the unconscious where they continue 
their activity just the same, although the indi- 
vidual is unaware of it. 

The libido, then, is comparable to a moving 
force of nature, such as the current of a river, 
which must flow on continuously. The libido 
never stops, as time never stops, and must flow 
on to the outlet (or until it is insuperably 
blocked). As the stream at its source starts in 
a narrow channel and grows broader toward the 
mouth, so does life from the beginning move on 
in small and narrow ways, growing deeper and 
broader as it progresses. There must be a cur- 
rent, and a channel for the river to follow, or it 
would become stationary like a pond or lake. 

The child's life must similarly be led into a 
channel as the waters in irrigated land are con- 
trolled so that they may produce something as 
they are absorbed by the growing plants. But 
the process of forming this channel is so slow 
that we cannot see its change from day to day. 
It is only at certain times that we notice it. Thus 

28 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

no water spills over the dam until it is full. The 
most noticeable change in the child's life is when, 
like the clod climbing to a soul in grass and flow- 
ers, the child at the age of puberty, suddenly 
shows a soul in the first love affair. If the child's 
libido should too suddenly flow from its narrow 
channel over a broad expanse, the current would 
be too suddenly dissipated, and would be lost. 
Similarly the child's life loses its healthy growth 
if it is too early overheated by too much emotion. 
The same injury results whether it is sexual emo- 
tion, too keen social rivalry, excitement from too 
much intellectual work, or from too frequent 
stimulation by adults. The child should remain 
a child until he passes through the various phases 
of physical development, and gains the physique 
strong enough to withstand the greater emotions 
of life. A small current of electricity will make 
no perceptible change in the wire which carries it. 
A greater current will heat the same-sized wire, 
and too great a current will burn it and turn it 
into a gas. Similarly in a channel made of earth 
to carry the water for irrigation. A stream of 
the proper size will flow through it without dam- 
age. An obstruction will cause the water to rise 
and overflow where it is not wanted. We can 
readily see that, just as an obstruction will dam 
a stream to overflowing, so the libido of the child 
or of the adult may be blocked by an obstruction 
and dammed till it overflows. This produces a 

29 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CEILD 

disorder in life 's development caused by the ina- 
bility to fulfil all its requirements. The result 
in any human being is likely to be illness, either 
physical or mental. There will be a complete dif- 
fusion of the libido, a dissipation and weakening 
of the urge of life, and when the mind retires abso- 
lutely from reality and growth, a person is called 
insane, and was formerly regarded by the world 
at large as incurable. 



30 



CHAPTER II 

THE DEVELOPMENT OP REPBESSION 

The child's life must follow a path directed 
by training, but to the parent the results are for 
a long time so invisible that the parents' efforts 
seem in size like drops of water compared with 
the ocean which is the size of the result aimed at. 
The results of the parents' efforts, however, are 
cumulative and are always equal to the efforts; 
only it is as hard for the parents to see the im- 
mediate results as it would be to see the physical 
effect on the wall of a room of the sound waves 
carrying his words of advice or correction. The 
part of child-training so discouraging to parents 
is the impossibility of seeing an immediate con- 
crete effect of their word or act. It is impossible 
that the effort of today on the part of the parent 
should have a result today upon the child — at any 
rate, a result considered adequate and sufficient 
by the parent. It is quite as impossible that the 
effort of today should not have an invisible re- 
sult today, and a visible result tomorrow and next 
year and in twenty-five years. The result visible 
tomorrow is so small as to make a pathetic con- 
trast with the intensity of the effort; the result 
visible next year is greater, but then the parent 

31 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 

has forgotten the treatment given the child a year 
ago, and does not connect the 1919 behaviour of 
the child with the 1918 advice. If it could be 
deeply enough impressed upon the parents that 
almost all mental effects are long distance effects, 
even when they are visible, it would do much to 
reassure them in their confident treatment of 
their children. Also it should not be forgotten 
that the immediate effects are produced, never- 
theless, in spite of the fact that they are not per- 
ceptible. 

EFFECT OF ACTION SURE 

Their not being perceptible arises from two 
causes. The first is that it takes a long time for 
a character to be built. The second is the inevi- 
table unconscious tendency in every one to resist 
an inunediate acknowledgment of the persuasive 
force of some other person. Every child when 
positively, either gently or aggressively, told to 
do something by teacher or parent reacts to that 
expression of authority in the only way possible 
for it, that is, by a natural antagonism, unless the 
expression of authority in the beginning was the 
best for the child life. As a plant or vine always 
grows toward the creative sunlight, so does a 
child grow toward a proper environment unless 
previous years have held back the child's energy 
and stunted growth. It is absolutely universal in 
all but the most highly civilized persons, both 

32 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 

young and old. It accounts for the necessity of 
training the soldier to act promptly at the officer's 
word of command. His natural antagonism has 
to be drilled out of him. It is removed in other 
circumstances in a spectacular manner in * liberty 
loan drives" and in revival meetings. In such 
circumstances the individuaPs natural and abso- 
lutely blameless antagonism to complying with 
the verbal suggestions of the authority is swept 
aside for the moment, and acting instinctively 
and imitatively he follows the direction given 
him. 

But the fact remains that the effects of human 
suasion are always retarded, if compared with 
the parents' desire for immediately perceptible 
results. Considering the number of elements 
which have to be modified in changing so com- 
plicated a thing as human conduct it is hardly 
right to call them retarded, although they neces- 
sarily seem so. It is, therefore, all the more im- 
portant that parents should be absolutely secure 
in their realization, first of the necessity of con- 
tinuing their efforts, and second of the fact that 
no effort is without its result. In fact, it cannot 
be too much emphasized and no action of any 
kind is without its present (imperceptible) and 
later (perceptible) result, a result which is, how- 
ever, frequently attributed to the wrong cause, 
through the forgetfulness or imperfect observa- 
tion of the parents. 

33 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 

WHERE THOUGHTS GO 

What becomes of the thoughts of an individual 
when they retire from reality as in a delirium? 
Why do they change in character? It long re- 
mained a mystery. We knew the thoughts still 
continued, but they took on a different nature and 
seemed to us confused. If one familiar with nerv- 
ous and mental troubles listens to a person talking 
in his sleep, he finds the methods of the sleeper's 
thinking similar to delirium, or the wandering 
thoughts of an insane patient, for in both cases 
the mind is not working in terms of reality, as 
our normal mind works when we are awake. Five 
hundred years before Christ, the Greek philoso- 
pher Heraclitus said, ^'For those who are awake 
only one universal world exists. During sleep 
every one returns to his own.*' It has taken 
2,500 years to realize the truth of Heraclitus' 
words, and at last men are gradually becoming 
aware of the fact that we live not only in our 
waking world, but at times in another world, that 
of our dreams. We know that great nervous 
shocks have sometimes proven too difficult for a 
person's mentality. We say such a person loses 
his mind, becomes unbalanced, a statement which 
is generally accepted. But the question remains, 
How does he lose his mind? Where does it go? 
What becomes of it? He does not die. On the 
contrary, he continues living and thinking, but 

34 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 

differently. We can more truthfully say that his 
mind is not lost, but is changed from conscious to 
unconscious thinking, a topic of which I shall have 
more to say later. And when a person is upset 
or has become unbalanced, the same figure of 
speech shows that his mind, in being upset, falls 
from the conscious to the unconscious variety of 
thinking. When the conscious mind is empty and 
vacant the balance has a greater weight thrown 
on the unconscious scale and it goes down, while 
the conscious scale goes up in the air. 



UN"co]srscious thinking 

The unconscious thinking then, as our figure of 
speech suggests, belongs to a lower level. It is 
hidden from our consciousness. We are abso- 
lutely unaware of the wishes and problems of the 
unconscious. They are repressed and put away 
as impossible of fulfilment. The conflicts in the 
unconscious smoulder, like a smothered fire in a 
bale of cotton, unseen and yet burning. Con- 
scious wishes pull us one way, the unconscious 
pull us in the other direction. The wishes of the 
conscious thought are governed by the religious 
and ethical education received from our parents, 
our teachers and our governments. Such educa- 
tion is necessary to a child, he must be instructed 
in the laws of right and wrong which his ances- 
tors to the best of their experience have worked 

35 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

out as needful to preserve the raee. But while 
the child and the adult follow these laws, enforced 
by a superior power, they still would like to fol- 
low their natural inclinations, and thus the con- 
scious wishes are repressed and apparently for- 
gotten. In the unconscious they have all the 
time existed and have accumulated, smoulder- 
ing, irritating and sometimes bursting forth 
when the individual is not able to effect a 
complete repression. They result in illness, 
criminal acts, insanity or any of the countless 
irregularities of living. With all the ideals 
and higher aims of life there is in each adult a 
lower layer of wishes, which in childhood is form- 
ing and is very near the surface, wishes for 
things he would like to have but cannot obtain, 
for things he would like to do but is not allowed. 
Children do not give up wanting these unobtain- 
able things, nor do adults, but repress the wishes 
for them; that is, they still exist but are not 
spoken or thought of consciously. As the child 
grows, these repressed wishes accumulate. As 
our wants change, many of them fade away, but 
the more vital ones continue through the entire 
life, so deeply repressed and buried from con- 
sciousness that we do not know they exist, and 
yet, if our environment is such that our vital in- 
stincts in childhood for self-preservation, or iii 
adulthood for race preservation, cannot be satis- 
fied, they stiU disturb our consciousness. This 

36 



I 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 

accumulation of repressed wishes, which are 
often of an animal nature, and which we have ap- 
parently forgotten, constitute the unconscious. If 
the environment of a child is not too difficult, not 
too weakening from improper or uneven disci- 
pline, if the force of growth, both mental and 
physical, the urge and interest of life, the libido, 
is allowed a proper outlet, and the child has been 
taught a proper control of his libido, then he will 
move on in successful growth. The repressed 
wish in the unconscious must be strong indeed in 
forcing a person against the power of his own 
rationality to do that for which he knows he will 
be punished, perhaps even lose his life. Emotion 
and intellect here come sharply into contrast. We 
judge it weakness of character when the uncon- 
scious wish becomes too strong to be ruled by the 
intellect; the heart has ruled the head, whereas 
the head should rule the heart. 



REPRESSION 

Psychoanalysis shows us the parallel between 
the nervous child and the criminal. In both the 
repression of the libido has been too great in- 
stead of being used with self-control. Repressed 
thoughts and wishes are uncontrolled thoughts 
and wishes shut up, intended to be hidden away 
from sight and sound, in the unconscious, so that 
they do not lead the individual to commit acts of 

37 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEKVOUS CHILD 

lawlessness. The difference between repression 
and self-control is enormous, but yet not generally- 
understood. An example may be given of a wild 
animal, untamed and not broken to domestic use, 
such as the horse. Eunning at large he would 
trample down life and be a great danger. If he 
is caught and shut up he is repressed but still 
wild; if tamed, broken to harness, he can be con- 
trolled, goes at our bidding and becomes a most 
useful beast of burden to help supply our needs. 
Like steam, or any other of nature's forces, the 
libido when compressed, bursts out, doing great 
damage to whatever encloses it. It is an irre- 
sistible force which we must tame and control, 
so that it may serve us. The individual must 
drive his libido or, like an unbroken horse, it will 
run away with him. The child 's libido is attached 
to himself, being almost exclusively nutritional in 
its nature, and to his parents who contribute 
toward his own personal and individual develop- 
ment. At adolescence the libido naturally, be- 
cause of the reproductive urge, seeks to become 
detached from the childhood love of self and of 
parents and to attach itself to some thing or per- 
son other than the family. Modern parents do 
not know that the word ^* parents'' means those 
who procreate the child, and that when the physi- 
cal need for the parent ceases at about twelve to 
fourteen years they cease automatically to become 
parents in the true sense and become, or should 

38 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESSION 

become, an only slightly distinguishable part of 
the child's (now the individual's ) reality. The 
parent as procreator is necessary, however, not 
merely at the time of conception but for much of 
the directive influence which creates character up 
to the time when the child should be pushed out 
of the parental nest. The erroneous views of 
parents have been well expressed by Meredith in 
the following words: 

'^It is difficult for those who think very earn- 
estly for their children to know when their chil- 
dren are thinking on their own account. The ex- 
ercise of their volition we construe as a revolt. 
Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed 
from its command, and here I think yonder old 
thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last 
of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift 
for itself, much the kindest of the two, though 
sentimental people do shrug their shoulders at 
these unsentimental acts of the creatures who 
never wander from nature. Now excess of obedi- 
ence is, to one who manages exquisitely, as bad as 
insurrection. " ^ 

Nature's effort to separate the child's libido 
from the original family ties is expressed in the 
first love affair. Also in the desire to escape 
from authority, to live independently, to run away 
for the love of adventure, in short, to experience 

1 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, N. Y., 1906, p. 275. 

39 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

all the fulness of life. These are all paths lead- 
ing to the bridge which must be crossed from 
childhood into the great unknown world, so beau- 
tifully described by Longfellow, who had an intui- 
tive knowledge of the adolescent fears when he 
wrote : 

'^Standing with reluctant feet 
Where the brook and river meet, 
Womanhood and childhood fleet! 

Gazing with a timid glance, 
On the brooklet's swift advance, 
On the river's broad expanse! 



Seest thou shadows sailing by, 
As the dove, with startled eye, 
Sees the falcon's shadow fly?" 

The beginning of repression in the child is the 
beginning of the accumulation of unconscious 
wishes, which we express in our symbolic thoughts 
and actions. In joy and laughter repression is 
relieved, but in cursing and anger it is increased, 
as I will attempt to explain in the following chap- 
ter. 



40 



CHAPTER in 

SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

Veby young children do not make, as adults do, 
clear distinctions between persons and things. 
The infant gradually learns the difference be- 
tween his toes, his head and the chair on which he 
bumps it. And when a distinction is made be- 
tween self and things that are not self, the objects 
appear more like persons than things. The young 
child speaks and thinks of things as if they had 
thoughts and sensations like his own. This per- 
sonification, or likening of inanimate things, 
shades off in adulthood into a use of metaphor 
and simile as when we say, knowing we do not 
speak literally, the whispering breeze, the mur- 
muring brook, the leaping flame, the mother earth, 
the road climbs up from the valley, the wind 
drives the clouds, the sunlight dances on the wa- 
ter, *^the moon shepherds the stars,'' ^ **How 
sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank."^ 
The attempt to be absolutely literal in describing 
anything is foredoomed to failure only because in 
order to do so we should have to use individual 
words for each individual object. The Arabs 

1 Vergil, JErieid, I, 608. 
z Merchtmt of Venice, v. i. 

41 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

have done so, approximately, in having over 2,000 
words to denote different kinds of horses. 

Indeed it is not alone because onr language is 
inadequate that we cannot rid ourselves of the 
tendency to read our actions and emotions into 
the objects we perceive. The tendency is a very 
deep and natural one, having been inherited from 
our remotest ancestors, who thought just as a 
present-day child may think, that a living spirit, 
having personal attributes, is in all inanimate 
objects. The literature of primitive races shows 
they found ^'tongues in trees, sermons in stones, 
books in the running brooks '* and life in every- 
thing. We know that in the childhood of the 
race, and in the childhood of the individual man, 
the mind works the same, and is subject to the 
same phases of development. 



PEIMITIVE THOUGHT 

There is accordingly a great difference in this 
respect of personification between adult and child- 
ish thinking. The remarkable fact is, however, 
that both kinds go on side by side in many adults, 
the archaic type having greater influence on the 
actions of some individuals, and the modern in 
others. To express it otherwise, the conscious 
mind of man has been educated according to re- 
ligious and ethical ideas, while the unconscious 
mind, of which we have no knowledge in our wak- 

42 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

ing hours, unless specially warned of it, has had 
no education. The unconscious mind of the adult 
works in the same archaic modes, and without 
moral laws, as does the conscious and unconscious 
mind of the child, or for that matter as did the 
minds of our primeval ancestors. Modern adults, 
just as primeval adults did and modern children 
do, in the unconscious desire to kill or destroy 
whatever interferes with their gratification, but 
the intellectual power has become sufficiently om- 
niscient to see with comprehensive glance the re- 
sults of such an existence without law and order. 
When we lose consciousness, either in sleep, in 
delirium, or under the influence of anaesthetics, 
our minds are not blank but are working rapidly. 
A person talking in his sleep will give verbal ex- 
pression to the most vital wishes, which would 
shock his waking mind. They find utterance but 
do not enter his own consciousness. If they do, 
they are always expressed in symbolic form. The 
most direct path for these primordial desires to 
find their way into the consciousness of the person 
who has them is through the dream of the night. 
In the form of animals and of inanimate things, 
or of other people than those really intended by 
the dream wish, persons, and even abstract ideas 
are represented. It has been definitely ascer- 
tained that the thoughts that occur in sleep are 
concerned primarily with problems and unfulfilled 
wishes. They are the problems presented by, and 

43 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

the desires existing in, the archaic unconscious, 
but problems which the dreamer's waking life 
could not solve and desires which his waking ac- 
tivities could not fulfil. 



COMPOSITE NATURE 

The indirect, figurative or symbolical nature of 
the thoughts that come to consciousness in the 
dream, is shown in many ways. Various persons 
in the dream generally symbolize some quality of 
the dreamer himself. If he dreams he saw Mr. 
X. and Mr. A., the associations with Mr. X. and 
Mr. A. are frequently somewhat as follows : *^Mr. 
X. is a very undesirable acquaintance because of 
his stinginess, meanness, and dishonorable deal- 
ings. Mr. A. would be a fine fellow, but he never 
has the courage of his convictions and never 
forms a definite conclusion." This means that 
the dream is attempting to tell the dreamer ''You 
have those qualities but do not realize them." It 
is much as if the dream were a different person- 
ality. It is indeed the personality each one has 
in him but does not know he has. In this way he 
gives himself an estimation of what is really his 
own valuation of certain of his own qualities as 
they appear to a part of his mind which is awake 
when he is not awake. 

For instance, in a hospital ward one of the 
.men patients had been visited by his fiancee. That 

44 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

night the nurse said to me: ^^That chap talks in 
his sleep. Perhaps he will interest you.'' Later 
when the lights were low we heard a voice call 
** Helen.'' Moving the screens around his bed 
awoke him. He was annoyed and said he had 
been dreaming he was in the old orchard at home 
and a big cow stood there looking at him. Helen 
was the name of his fiancee. He had symbolized 
her as a cow, thereby expressing indirectly his 
strong unconscious wish to live his childhood 
over again with Helen, who would thus have to 
play the dual role of wife and mother. There is 
nothing extraordinary in the cow's impersonating 
two women, as every dream image may be com- 
posite, representing more than one person. 

IDENTIFICATION 

Something of this reading himself into his ob- 
jects begins with the child at a very early age, for 
when he begins to talk he takes many inanimate 
things to be alive and active. He will scold his 
toys. If he bumps himself against the table it is 
as much the table's doings as his. When we trip 
over an obstacle and hurt the shinbone, how much 
satisfaction we feel in giving a good kick to the 
offending obstacle, for down deep in us all is the 
feeling that the obstacle should have gotten out 
of the way and was malicious in hurting us. Intel- 
lectually we know that the rocker on a chair is 

45 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHttD 

inanimate, but when we are bruised and sore 
from coming in contact with one we feel that the 
protruding thing molested us. The intellectual 
knowledge that the rocker is inanimate is a con- 
scious thought, but the feeling that the rocking- 
chair should have moved aside and not stood in 
our path to hurt us comes from the unconscious. 
Not only do we all thus endow inanimate things 
like rocking-chairs with life, but in a dream 
brought by a patient, the rocking-chair is a symbol 
of something more than a chair, and to learn what 
the chair symbolizes in the unconscious we must 
trace back the thoughts which come to mind con- 
cerning it. We call these thoughts *^ associa- 
tions" and the associations with a rocking-chair 
were: *^ Cradle, childhood, mother." The asso- 
ciations with the foot were ^^ Getting somewhere, 
it carries us through life, takes us over a path we 
are going." Now, when we analyzed the wish 
to kick the rocking-chair we found the conscious 
wish came from the unconscious wish to kick the 
mother out of our way. She had prevented us 
from getting somewhere in the path we wished 
to tread, and should have moved aside to let us 
go on in the world as we wished, but with mali- 
cious intent she has stopped our progress. Or, 
while she may have surrounded us with such an 
atmosphere of ideal sweetness and goodness that 
clings to us, we have to put her influence aside to 
make progress. She wants us to notice her and 

46 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

to remember that she has the power of hurting us, 
a point of view on our part which will be under- 
stood from the parent-complex which I have de- 
scribed in another chapter. 



THE CENSOR 

In the sphere of the unconscious lies the 
hidden cause of nervous and mental troubles. 
This is the case because the health of the body 
depends upon the perfect condition of the func- 
tioning of the nerves. The energy which trav- 
erses them, called the libido, requires an un- 
obstructed passage for the outflow of the creative 
energy which is expressed in acts of friendship, 
affection and sympathy, and in the emotions 
which these acts arouse. If these creative emo- 
tions are in any way held fast within the body 
and do not find opportunity for expression, the 
free expression of libido is blocked. Through the 
technique of psychoanalysis is discovered the at- 
tachment in the unconscious, the obstruction 
which blocks the free expression of the creative 
emotions. In the case of dreams the thoughts 
of the unconscious meet the conscious at the mo- 
ment of awakening and arouse the conscience. 
This awakening conscience instantly rejects the 
wishes which the mind has been dwelhng on dur- 
ing sleep because, according to the conventions of 
the social environment, these wishes are im- 

47 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVdUS CHH^D 

proper. We call this element of conscience tlie 
censor because it either blots out the frankly ani- 
mal desires, arising in the unconscious, thus leav- 
ing us unaware of them, or else it transforms 
them by means of the symbolism of the dream 
so that we do not recognize them for what they 
are. Thus again we are unaware of them. 



THE CONFLICT 

But the power of the unconscious is elemental 
in its strength and it constantly pushes outward 
for expression in consciousness. It is always 
trying in some way to evade or avoid the censor 
or deceive him into allowing the thoughts to enter 
consciousness. We speak' sometimes of this con- 
flict between the unconscious desire and the cen- 
sor as the conflict of good and evil. We listen to 
the sermons of the still small voice, without in the 
least understanding the significance of the strug- 
gle or realizing the identity of the two contest- 
ants. If we could clearly see within us the Twen- 
tieth Century struggling with 10,000 years B.C., 
we should not have so sorry a time of it. 

When the life energy has been properly trained 
in such a way that, in place of primeval means of 
satisfaction, it freely takes the forms of substi- 
tute satisfaction supplied by modern civilized 
life, the life energy or libido is free in its ex- 
pression and helps us with its marvellous vitality 

48 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

toward the filling out of a well rounded life. 
When the libido, on the other hand, has been sti- 
fled and buried in the unconscious, then the primi- 
tive emotions of jealousy, envy, and hatred pre- 
vail and stunt the life by depriving it of its in- 
ward and outward growth. They surely stunt the 
life because in civilized communities the outward 
acts of malice, which would have in prehistoric 
times been performed, are prohibited and the 
violence which would have been wreaked upon an 
object is now virtually turned upon the individual 
himself, who experiences these emotions. That 
fear and rage have an injurious effect upon the 
body has already been mentioned. This is quite 
as injurious an effect, if not even more so, when 
the destructive emotions are suppressed as when 
they are worked off in destructive acts. Here 
lies the gist of the whole thing. No emotions 
should be swallowed. The results of doing that 
are a *^ rotten" disposition mentioned elsewhere. 
All emotions should be given free play under con- 
trol. Therefore, only the constructive ones which 
help in the process of building the tissues of the 
body should be cultivated. The means whereby 
this substitution may be effected are outlined 
elsewhere. 

In almost all forms of nervousness there is a 
conflict going on in the patient's life between the 
two forms of thought, the archaic and the mod- 
ern. One of these, in the unconscious, is pulling 

49 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

the nervous patient back, and yet he is absolutely 
unaware of it. The other is the natural urge to 
outward growth which is striving for expression. 
This identifies the natural urge with the force of 
conscience representing social development in the 
soul of the individual. For the natural urge or 
libido is, at one and the same time, both in har- 
mony with and at variance with the selfish de- 
sires of the individual. The self -preservative or 
nutritional aspect of the libido sometimes comes 
into direct conflict with the race-preservative or 
reproductive, and at no time more than the pres- 
ent, when the birth of a child is of so vast an 
economic importance in the lives of the parents. 
When a person is pulled two ways by equal 
opposing forces, he stands still as in a tug-of- 
war. Thus, if the unconscious pulls him strong- 
est he grows more and more nervous as the years 
advance and the urge of conscious life grows 
less — the urge which is the call of his fellows to 
get up and out and accomplish something which 
is socially productive. His nervousness is due 
to his weakness in the conflict which in spite of 
age still continues between the individual and so- 
ciety. This nervousness or mental unbalancing is 
inevitable, because the libido will regress and be- 
come primitive in its nature and stronger than 
the censor of consciousness, through the weak- 
ening of the ties between the individual and 
society. 

50 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 



THE PHANTASY 



When the real, which is the social and con- 
scious, life of an individual is neither satisfied 
nor happy, his mind is more and more occupied 
with what is called ^'building castles in the air.'* 
We call such thinking " phantasying/ ' It is a 
make-believe existence and is seen in day dream- 
ing and in the night dreams as well. One becomes 
rich, famous and beautiful, has revenge on those 
he envies, destroys any one or anything in his 
way, and surrounds himself with a fairyland of 
music and beauty and whatever pleases his senses. 
In day dreaming a person often becomes so in- 
tense in his phantasies that he is not aware of 
those around him. I have watched patients get 
rid of unpleasant duties by bringing on a dreamy 
spell, when they felt as though they were floating, 
the mind drifting like a boat on a lake without a 
current, the face without expression, the eyes un- 
seeing and dreamy. It requires strong, vigorous 
thoughts to bring such a person back to reality, 
and then reality must be made sufficiently inter- 
esting to keep such a weak mind directed toward 
it. The phantasies of day dreams, as well as 
night dreams, closely resemble tales of mythology 
and fairy lore, when the race was in the child- 
hood of its development. How many working 
girls have had Cinderella dreams, how many chil- 
dren with despotic government at home have had 

51 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS GRJLD 

Jack the Giant Killer dreams, and adoles- 
cent dreams of Aladdin and his Wonderful 
Lamp? 

The dream is the via regia to the unconscious, 
because in the dream images we have as nearly 
as possible the manifestation of what has been 
repressed into it. The dream uses an older form 
of thought which is a survival of archaic modes 
of expression, for as the body bears traces of 
anatomical and physiological development so does 
the human mind from the threshold of antiquity 
show psychological development. We have in- 
stances of earlier forms of thought in the sym- 
bolism of allegories and parables of the Bible by 
which moral or spiritual relations are typically 
set forth with the essential qualities of brevity 
and definiteness employed in dream pictures. A 
beautiful example of symbolism in the parable 
is in 2 Sam. XII, 1-9, and an equally beautiful 
allegory in the 80th Psalm tells of the deliver- 
ance of the children of Israel from Egypt as the 
planting and growth of a vine : 

*^Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt, 
thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. 

**Thou preparedst room before it, and 
didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled 
the land. The hills were covered with the 
shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were 
like the goodly cedars. ' ' 
52 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

In the fable we again see symbolic thinking 
where irrational beings and sometimes inanimate 
objects are, for the purpose of moral instruction, 
made to act and speak with human interests and 
passions. In the fable human passions and ac- 
tions are attributed to beasts, while in the para- 
ble the lower creations are used to illustrate the 
higher life. Likewise fairy tales and myths arose 
in a primitive age and go back to the remotest 
antiquity. There is a close affinity between the 
fable, allegory, parable, fairy tales and our 
dreams in that they amplify and elaborate moral 
instruction. The dream has a moral message to 
the sleeper and contains the undeveloped part of 
our minds, also the repressed part made up of 
whatever each life has repressed because of the 
difficulty of fitting it in with the conscious life 
that he has to lead. Some people repress the 
best part of themselves owing to mistaken ideals 
of duty, and in them the repressed part contains 
pictures of helplessness, imprisonment, confine- 
ment, fright, fear. 

In the dream we trace a compensating function 
of the unconscious, so that those thoughts and 
tendencies of a personality, which in conscious 
life are too seldom recognized, come spontane- 
ously into action during sleep when the conscious 
process is disconnected. 

The question might be asked. How can the 
dream contain a message to the sleeper if it can- 

53 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

not be understood? To this I must answer that 
understanding does not always consist in an in- 
tellectual process but in an emotional reaction. 

There are many other things in dreams be- 
sides repressed wishes. There is much future in 
them, also much of the racial past never before 
conscious, therefore never repressed. 

In the dream thoughts we see what has been 
most successful in passing the censor, and we 
have but to remove the disguises from the 
thoughts as presented in the dream to find out 
what the symbols of the dream really mean, to 
be able to discern the trends of the unconscious 
as they actually are. The dream is the best way, 
and almost the only way, of showing the patient 
the cause of his neurosis. The neurosis itself is, 
to be sure, one of the manifestations of the un- 
conscious desire, but it is a very elaborate one 
and sometimes impossible to unravel. The dream, 
on the contrary, is an epitome of the conditions 
causing the neurosis, and when analyzed, under- 
stood and grasped as a unity, can be used as a 
starting point for numberless excursions into the 
unconscious, by means of the *^free associations.'' 
It is like a plan of a city by which we can clearly 
see how .0 get to any part of it. The dream has 
multitudinous avenues leading to all the districts 
of the soul. Working out the psychology of 
thought by association of ideas is not original 
with the modern psychologists, it was used by 

54 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

Aristotle. It is stated that lie worked out a fairly 
complete system of psychology, and stated an im- 
portant psychological principle — that of the as- 
sociation of ideas. 

So true an expression of the real unconscious 
trends is the dream that the experienced psycho- 
analyst can clearly see during the narration of 
the patient ^s first dream the exact cause of the 
trouble. And here is where the shallow psycho- 
analyst, like the dogmatic, dictatorial parent tell- 
ing the child categorically what he must do and 
laying a load of injunctions upon him, makes the 
mistake of telling the patient at the first inter- 
view the whole story of his neurosis, and of not 
letting him work it out for himself. The aca- 
demic information, whether in technical or plain 
words, makes no impression, because the intellect 
does not directly govern the unconscious. Con- 
scious intellectual control of the archaic primor- 
dial urge within us there must be, but we can get 
it only indirectly through the emotions, for the 
emotions govern the unconscious. It expresses 
itself through and in emotions, it is accessible by 
the way of the emotions. Therefore, there must 
be an emotional reaction felt by the patient before 
he can feel a conscious wish strong enough to 
supplant the unconscious wish. He cannot sim- 
ply be told to have an emotional reaction any 
more than the child really feels ashamed when 
an indulgent parent tells him he ought to be 

55 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 

ashamed for what he has done. Very often, if 
not always, the feeling aroused by such language 
on the part of a parent to a child is merely an 
imitation of the indignation which the parent 
feels (or feigns) and not the emotion of repent- 
ance verbally demanded. 

The slow realization on the part of the patient 
is necessary because the development of charac- 
ter aimed at in psychoanalysis is a natural 
growth, and not an instantaneous change made by 
the ^* presto'' of a magician. Just as the limbs 
of a child grow larger by infinitesimal increments 
of single cells, so must the character be formed 
by allying one act after another with the creative 
emotions. The symbolism of the dream shows 
us the means of doing this. From interpreting 
the dream one comes to interpreting the waking 
life in the same way. This is not to say that 
waking life is a dream, but that the dream is 
really an integral part of waking life, just as the 
flower is an integral part of the plant. And just 
as the flower can be that particular '^flower in 
the crannied wall'' and no other one or no other 
kind of flower, simply because it is the fullest ex- 
pression of the life force of that plant and that 
particular kind of plant, so the dream is but a 
petal of a flower of the unconscious. And just 
as the flower bears in its corolla, sometimes hid- 
den from view, the male and female elements of 
its reproductive system, so does the dream con- 

56 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

tain, but generally hidden, the fructifying ele- 
ments of our mental life. As there are some 
kinds of flowers which require the services of the 
bee to cause a cross fertilization and as the shape 
of those flowers is determined by the anatomy of 
the bee, and its colours designed to attract the bee 
from afar, so does the soul of certain types of peo- 
ple require the directive influence of another soul 
in order most fruitfully to liberate the powers of 
that certain type of personality and bring them 
to fullest development and richest fecundity. 

It is not mere fancy that I compare the soul of 
a neurotic child to a brilliant flower. Neurotics 
are in one sense a higher type of evolution than 
the self-sufficient street Arab, just as wind -ferti- 
lized plants are of lower order than those which 
employ co-operation of other organisms. 

The vital point of it all, and the thesis of this 
chapter in particular, is that the ultimate truths 
of the soul cannot be expressed literally, but re- 
quire symoblism to represent them as adequately 
as they can be pictured or intoned in human 
thought. A purely scientific account of any nat- 
ural phenomenon describes it literally as far as 
it is possible to find literal language for external 
phenomena. ^^Dirt is matter in the wrong place." 
Where science cannot find such language, it in- 
vents arbitrary symbols such as CO2, H2O, H2SO4, 
etc. Human thinking not rigidly directed by 
formulae, though I admit the directed form has 

57 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 

its proper place, represents anything (that must 
be represented) necessarily through the medium 
of parables, fables, similes, allegories, myths, 
metaphors. This is due to the mind's inevitably 
identifying itself in infancy with the world. This 
infantile mode of thought persists in varying ex- 
tent throughout the whole of many persons' later 
lives. In fairy stories we have the elaborate de- 
velopment which an adult mind, with adult expe- 
rience and passion and desire, produces through 
the medium of very unscientific metaphorical 
language. The child and the unconscious in the 
adult have the same figurative mode of expres- 
sion, but without the artistic elaboration. 

It is not to be understood that the symbolic 
thoughts of the dreams of night or day or the 
symbolic acts of everyday life have more than a 
very general loose correspondence between dif- 
ferent individuals. It is not a case of interpreta- 
tion of dreams and acts such as the old-fashioned 
dream books give us, or like the wholly artificial 
* language of flowers," or ^^handkerchief flirta- 
tion," the first of which is partly, and the last is 
wholly, an arbitrary and artificial code. The un- 
derstanding of a dream is impossible without 
some of the '^free associations" of the dreamer, 
and if the same dream pictures were presented 
for analysis by two or more persons, they might 
mean utterly different things for the several 
dreamers. *^ Water," for instance, might 

58 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

mean *4ife'^ in one person's dream and ^* death" 
in another's, according to the relation of that idea 
to other ideas occurring to the dreamer's mind in 
connection with the water. 



SYMBOLISM PRESEBVES SLEEP 

A common misapprehension about dreams is 
expressed in the phrase ^^ sleep troubled by bad 
dreams" which seems to imply that the dream is 
a disturber of sleep. On the contrary, the sym- 
bolism of the dream is the preserver and main- 
tainer of sleep in that it, the dream, may repre- 
sent in grotesque and apparently irrelevant pic- 
tures a desire which, if it were shown in its true 
form, would immediately awaken the sleeper and 
fill him with shame and remorse, which might 
keep him awake for the rest of the night. So 
the dream generally completely disguises the un- 
conscious wishes, and the ideas as they appear 
in consciousness are harmless enough to be tol- 
erated and told with a smile next morning at 
breakfast. 

This does not mean to say, however, that the 
unconscious wishes should remain unknown to the 
dreamer, particularly if, as in the case of a nerv- 
ous person, there is some element in his life which 
is preventing him from living it fully and joy- 
ously. In such a case the dream should have, as 
should the neurosis, the fullest study. It should 

59 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

be remembered, too, that no one can successfully 
do that for himself, not even the most trained 
psychoanalyst, because the viewpoint of the 
mirror held up by the other person is absolutely 
essential. 

MANIFEST vs. LATENT 

Psychoanalysis is the scientific special investi- 
gation of symbolic thought and action, or the 
study of all mental manifestations as symbolic. 
It is necessary to look beneath the surface to dis- 
cover in the unconscious the original thoughts of 
which our conscious manifestations are but a rep- 
resentation or reshaping of the thing it stands 
for. In this sense nothing is what it appears to 
be. Not only is the manifest content of the dream 
a disguise of the real unconscious desire actuating 
the dream, but the actualities of every kind with 
which we are surrounded are, with few exceptions, 
disguises of the vital tendencies of our most red- 
blooded human life. The disguise is most gro- 
tesque in the night dream. Lying as he was in a 
cot in a hospital ward, what apparent interest had 
the patient in a cow in an old orchard? "What 
impression does any one get from his unstudied 
dreams except that of the most unaccountable 
bizarrerie? But the thoughts connected with the 
dream show the dream's intimate affiliation with 
our everyday life; and the acts of our everyday 
life, when unity is sought for in them, fail as 

60 



SYMBOLIC THOUGHT 

signally as does the unanalyzed dream, to show 
any unity or any definite purpose. Therefore 
many adults and most children need the clear-eyed 
view of their lives as a manifestation of a larger 
life. Psychoanalysis can help them calmly to see 
things as they are and act accordingly and to 
secure the reaction of the most wholesomely 
creative emotions which make for health and 
strength developed to the utmost. 



61 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

As a test of growth, of the successful attainment 
of adulthood, we may take the fact that the child 
thinks only of himself, of what he likes and needs 
to satisfy his cravings for self-preservation in 
order that he may grow so as later to contribute 
to the race. He may be called selfish in the com- 
mon acceptance of the term, but he is necessarily 
so, and usually finds much difficulty in repressing 
that variety of selfishness, for it is really his own 
self-protection. Nature demands that the young 
receive solicitous care, food and protection, in 
order to bring them to full growth for creative 
purposes. The higher the form of life the more 
protection does nature give her young. In ani- 
mals the young are cared for through the time of 
helplessness and then weaned to independence. 
As the instincts of the child for self-preservation 
are used to promote his growth, so the adult's in- 
stincts, when he falls in love, studies a profession, 
becomes a scientist, or follows the call of art, lit- 
erature or commercial life, or in some other way 
helps on the progress of the race, are for race 
preservation. But if the environment of the child 
is full of obstacles from unreasonable discipline, 

62 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

viz. from too much indulgence, from examples of 
companions who are too much indulged, from too 
early development, from quarrelling parents or 
unhappy home life — then the repressed wishes in 
the unconscious become more difficult to keep out 
of consciousness and there begins a conflict be- 
tween the repressed wishes pulling in one direc- 
tion and the parental wishes pulling the child in 
another. What happens depends upon the poten- 
tial with which the child was born, or if I may 
coin a phrase, upon the strength of the *^ psychic 
muscle'' of the infantile life struggling to grow 
away from the child to maturity. 

If the child has a powerful make-up, he will 
resist the environment, break away from it, be- 
come a runaway, lawless, incorrigible, perhaps a 
criminal. If he has sprung from neurotic soil he 
may be too weak to break away and escape. The 
discouraged libido will then sink down in the in- 
dividual, and there is often a severe physical ill- 
ness. The body in such cases becomes an easy 
prey for disease germs, while the mind seeks a 
world of phantasy to dwell in, which is pleas- 
anter than reality, or, veiled in symbolism, con- 
tinues the conflict, hidden from conscious thought. 

UNCONSCIOUS PROBLEMS 

The child whose mind is occupied with uncon- 
scious problems has no power of concentration, is 

63 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

dreamy, abstracted and often tearful. Discipline 
or punishment lias no effect. He remains absent- 
minded and will say he is not thinking of any- 
thing. In the face of these circumstances we 
should remember that he does not know his uncon- 
scious wishes and problems. It is for us, the psy- 
choanalysts, to analyze his unconscious and 
show him what is interfering with his conscious 
efforts, and then we help him free his libido and 
provide an outlet for it. In the analysis of an 
adult we must also show him the unconscious 
problem and wish, but he must free his own libifio 
and provide an outlet for it, for the adult can 
more or less control his environment. The child 
cannot do so and must be removed from it. 

Dr. Jung of Ziirich conceives the libido as 
analogous to energy, as understood in the physi- 
cal sciences, and accepts for mental phenomena 
the fundamental principle of the conservation of 
energy, namely, that the total energy of the uni- 
verse is constant. In the processes of nature no 
energy is created or destroyed. Increase or de- 
crease of energy in one form corresponds respec- 
tively to a decrease or increase in some other form 
or forms. In the conception of the Zurich school 
the libido or urge of life is constant.^ If it is not 

, 1 Physical energy is either static or dynamic, and physical 
science has shown that it is the constant tendency of all the 
dynamic energy in the world to become static. Thus the dynamic 
energy of the sim collected by the leaves of trees a million years 
ago is released in the coal which we burn in our furnaces. But 
it requires the expenditure of a large amount of dynamic energy 

64 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

being used in constructive work, it is a destruc- 
tive force, and has the moral effect of sending the 
individual backward rather than forward on the 
highway of life. The individual is not aware of 
going backward. He may be in good physical 
health, but if there is a loss of libido in the con- 
scious sphere, there is an increase in the uncon- 
scious mental activity. Again, the correlations of 
the libido are like those of energy in physics. 
That is, the transformation of one kind of energy 
into another is called in the terminology of psy- 
choanalysis the sublimation of the libido, and 
operates as the steam engine, transforming the po- 
tential chemical energy of the coal or wood and of 
the oxygen of the air into mechanical energy. 
In the sublimation of the libido we transform the 
creative energy into science, art, literature, com- 
merce, etc. But however much transformed, life, 
time and the libido, are constant, are ever mov- 
ing on. 

In forbidding athletics, games, dancing, learn- 
ing to play on musical instruments, or in placing 
prohibitions on the many lines of activity of child- 

of mankind to transform in mining, transportation and stoking 
the static energy of coal into the dynamic energy of steam. Uii 
the other hand, it would seem as if in human and animal life 
there was an unending fund of dynamic energy, as if evolution 
had been designed for the purpose of energizing the inert, in- 
organic matter of the universe. Therefore the human mind rep- 
resents the latest step in evolution toward the formation of an 
organism for collecting, transforming, preserving and again 
liberating energy. The libido is the human expression of this 
pontinuous dynamic energy. 

65 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

hood, not infrequently parents unknowingly ar- 
rest the libido of their children. It is a serious 
offence against the laws of life. We often hear it 
said : ' ^ We shall keep that child young, we are in 
no hurry for him to grow up. We are not anxious 
for high marks in school, we want him to get 
well.'' Growth and improvement must work to- 
gether, or we cannot preserve youth; but if we 
try to keep the child from growing we make him 
ill, because we are acting no more intelli- 
gently than the children who stunted a kitten's 
growth by trying to ''cure" it with doses of 
whisky. 

CHILD MUST BE ACTIVE 

When we reprove a child for being noisy or 
restless, we are reproving him for being a child, 
and are doing our best to stunt his growth. Could 
anything be more stupid? We cannot allow him 
to shout and jump in the drawing-room, but we 
should provide a place and time for him to do so. 
We are all transformers, turning air, food and 
sunlight into energy. The great creative force of 
life is the sun, which frees energy as electricity 
is freed. We should send the child out into the 
sunlight and under the blue skies, either literally 
or figuratively. We speak of a sunny disposition 
as a great personal charm. How stupid we are if 
we do not realize that a child needs sunlight with- 

66 



X 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

in as well as without the house. The opening out 
of a new leaf in the spring is no more inevitable 
than is the response of the child to the sunny dis- 
position. The bud with its sap constitutes a coii- 
dition in which the warmth of the sun cannot fail 
to produce the expansion into a glossy green leaf. 
Quite as inevitable as the effect of the sunny at- 
mosphere upon either child or leaf is that of the 
cold, gloomy atmosphere which is sometimes 
spread by certain people. A nervous invalid tell- 
ing of her aches and pains brings clouds into a 
home. An irritable father, however real may be 
the cause of his feelings, has no right to disturb 
the home atmosphere. The skeleton in the family 
closet, hidden because of pride, must be destroyed, 
and the door left wide open. The financial prob- 
lem of living beyond the income, and the mal- 
adjustment of the nouveau riche are both equally 
destructive. The former brings heavy clouds of 
misery and despair; the latter is as the burning 
tropical sun, drying out the freshness and frag- 
rance of youth. 

GUIDING THE LIBIDO 

In the terms of the Swiss school we must, with 
sufficient discipline, ** guide the libido" of the 
child through an environment such that it keeps 
the understanding evenly balanced. Telling the 
truth in answering all questions is the only way 

67 



THE PROBLEM OP THE NERVOUS CHELD 

to keep the confidence of our children, and if we 
are too prudish to overcome our resistances to the 
vital truths, for which the childish mind is ever 
searching, we should know that our children will 
regard us with suspicion. This does not contra- 
dict what was said above about the child ^s learn- 
ing too much, or being too emotional, for it has 
been found that the refusal to answer a child's 
questions is much more exciting to him than a 
ready and cheerful answer. A lying answer 
arouses strong destructive emotions in the child. 
A lying parent is like a corrupt contractor who 
uses mud instead of mortar in building a brick 
wall. At some critical time the wall collapses, but 
the contractor has fled to another country. The 
child never is harmed by simple and frank an- 
swers which it can understand. Only when the 
answer contains more than the child can assimi- 
late does it contain the wrong ingredient (mud). 
In fact everything that is not assimilated is mud 
in the structure of the mind, just as the unas- 
similable matter taken into the stomach is re- 
jected. To the pure all things are pure. If our 
own ideals have been true, if our minds have not 
been perverted when we have glimpsed life at its 
source, we can present its mysteries to our 
children as spiritual truths, and teach them 
that all conception and birth are beautiful, 
whether it is the unfolding of a rosebud or a 
chUd. 

68 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

THE FAMILY SKELETON 

An illustration of the bad effect on the child of 
a family skeleton's concealment by the parent is 
seen in the case of a girl whose father was a 
drunkard. This fact was kept from the child as 
long as possible, with the result that when finally 
she came to know it, at the age of sixteen years, 
she took it as an insoluble problem, because it had 
been kept secret from her, and was therefore re- 
pressed. When in later life she came upon the 
problems connected with becoming a mother her- 
self, she was not able to devote her entire energy 
to the solution of those problems, because a part 
of her energy was absorbed still in pondering, 
whether consciously or unconsciously, on the 
drunkenness of her father. In her unconscious 
thoughts of the dream world she saw a man 
struggling up a hill, sometimes slipping, stum- 
bling, and as lie neared the top something would 
hit Mm, knock him down. He would fall, roll 
down to the bottom of the hill and lie there as 
though stunned and looking like a drunken man 
asleep in the gutter. He would gradually awaken 
and start again, sometimes pulling liimself up by 
tiny twigs, which strangely seemed to ^ear his 
weight, but again something would send him fall- 
ing down to the depths. 

Her father was the man in the dream, strug- 
gling to rise in life ; the reproaches of her domi- 

69 



THE PROBLEM OP THE NERVOUS CHttD 

neering mother sent Mm down again. His love 
for the patient was symbolized as the tiny twigs 
which pulled him up. Again and again she 
queried : Why could not her father overcome the 
force which knocked him down? I hope when the 
reader finishes reading this book he will under- 
stand the answer to the question. 

Her father's morbid condition should have been 
no problem to her, and it would not have been, had 
it not been invested with so much emotional value 
on account of the long secrecy and the subsequent 
sudden revelation. She should have been told of 
it in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, and then she 
would not have wondered, when she became a 
mother, why her father was a drunkard. In won- 
dering why her father had so disgraced the family 
she expended too much energy to be able to give 
enough to her own personal problems when she 
herself became a mother. 



TJNASSIMILATED THOUGHT 

How can we tell whether the child's mind con- 
tains any or little or much unassimilated or re- 
pressed matter? This is a very important ques- 
tion, for on our ability to give it a scientifically 
correct answer depends our knowledge of whether 
we are doing our best for our children or not. Of 
course it goes without saying that if we do not 
make a scientific study of the child's mental 

70 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

processes, we are not doing as much for him as 
we should do if we were all able to examine him 
by the methods of the expert in the most modem 
form of psychology. This degree of care is not 
possible for parents in general. While they can- 
not be expected to go into intensive child rearing 
with the same business-like devotion to systematic 
methods as that of the breeders of animals (even 
guinea pigs destined for vivisection receive more 
intelligent care than the majority of children!), 
they could yet, with a little more knowledge, avoid 
certain errors in bringing up their children. They 
could also do some things which would not natu- 
rally occur to them to do without suggestions re- 
ceived from scientific sources. 

And then again we either do not welcome our 
children but feel the additional care as too heavy 
a burden, or we too eagerly await the arrival of 
our first child and plan to make him a model. 
How, then, can a child be free to grow as nature 
has intended, if we are making of him either a 
burden or a plaything for us to exhibit? The child 
needs guidance from the hour of birth but not re- 
straint or repression. He needs all his energy for 
his play which is a preparation for earning his 
livelihood. But while the child's libido is being 
guided and trained into strong growth, it must be 
free. The child must feel free and yet have re- 
spect for authority which leads to obedience. 
From force of habit we impose raanjr unnecessary 

71 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 

'^don'ts'* upon children. The old story of 
**Mary, go and see what the children are doing, 
and tell them to stop** shows onr selfishness and 
ignorance. We misinterpret the many phases of 
growth which the child must live through, if we 
think the desire for toys, printing presses, stamp 
collecting Indian belongings, circus doings, tin 
soldiers, railroads, electrical devices (the last 
named coming at puberty just before the first love 
affair) are all extravagances which should be 
refused. 

CAIiF LOVE 

The manifestation of puberty which evokes the 
most perverse behaviour on the part of the parent 
is the child's first love affair. Rarely do the par- 
ents, if they show any reactions at all, show the 
one most helpful to the child. The first love affair 
of the boy usually fills the mother with alarm. 
Her unconscious then gets the best of her. She 
feels that she has lost her boy. At the age of 
puberty she has literally and physically lost her 
hoy, as he has become physically a man. She 
should not, but she usually does, wish to keep him 
a boy physically. The young man should then be 
her son, rather than her boy, in both the mental 
and the physical spheres. Parents should wel- 
come with great relief the appearance of the first 
love affair. Although they may still need guid- 
ance in this first love affair it means go much, as 

72 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

it is the beginning of the self-reliance and respon- 
sibility of the man with his hopes and ambitions. 
The boy or girl should at that age receive as little 
advice and admonition as possible, beyond the 
necessity of continuing whatever line of work, 
whether in school or business, in which he is en- 
gaged. The first love affair should come at about 
the age of fifteen, and is a delicate subject be- 
tween parent and child, as those deep, vital emo- 
tions are too sacred and wonderful to youth to be 
lightly mentioned. Parents should never ridicule 
the first love affair, nor yet encourage it. When 
the twelve to fifteen year old son calls his mother 
into his darkened room after he has retired and 
says : * * Oh, mother, I cannot go to sleep. I keep 
thinking of Elsie all the time," she should not be 
shocked or dismayed. She should encourage him 
to talk about Elsie, not for the purpose of increas- 
ing his affection for her, although most mothers 
mistakenly believe that will be the result, but to 
open a safety valve. 

The more he talks about Elsie the less deeply 
will he feel. He will, on the contrary, be ready 
to pass his ^*calf love'' on to the next girl who 
smiles at him. While the mother is inevitably 
though unexpectedly pained at the son's love af- 
fairs, she will later be surprised, if she has with- 
held opposition, and has been patient in listen- 
ing to the praise of Elsie, to hear him say: 
** Mother, I have loved you so much better since I 

73 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

have loved Elsie. I used to think you didn't love 
me any, because you wouldn't let me do things, 
and always made me do things I didn't want to 
do. But I know you had to do that, because the 
things you made me do are just the things Elsie 
likes to have me do." And so the son returns to 
the mother with a different kind of love. She is 
not the only ideal woman, but she is the ideal 
mother, and her son will give her a more sympa- 
thetic love. What is more it will be strong and 
protecting. He will even feel reproachful that he 
has been such a trouble to her. Later on, if she 
has been the right kind of mother, he will under- 
stand and appreciate her self-sacrifice for him. 
Not every mother is the right kind. She is some- 
times too infantile, or what is commonly called 
selfish, to devote her energies to her children. 
Then, too, she may be potentially the right kind, 
but, if money is scarce, she makes the grave mis- 
take at the earliest possible age of requiring her 
children to work and support her, instead of sup- 
porting herself. 

A father's feeling upon learning of his daugh- 
ter's first love affair is often that of resentment 
and anger. He would like to forbid the presence 
of any young man in his house. If he has sown 
some wild oats himself, he condemns young men 
in general as scamps and rascals. Fortunate, in- 
deed, is the girl who can go freely to her father 
and say: **0h, father, Jack cares for me and I 

74 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

am so happy! Isn^t he good-looking? He is just 
wonderful!'' If there is no opposition, the first 
love affair is usually outgrown in a few months ; 
and it should be, as rarely do adolescents grow 
and develop in unison. Early love affairs 
do not make happy marriages, and so wise 
parents change the environment with school 
or visits, to broaden the experience of their 
children. 



WOBK AND PLAY 

One of the most difficult tasks which often con- 
fronts parents in directing childhood into adult 
life is to assist the child to separate work and 
play, to arouse a desire to work and to do some- 
thing for others, even though it involves a sacri- 
fice. As we see in the Swiss conception of psycho- 
analysis, the child's libido must be free to be put 
into his daily environment. Whatever the day's 
work may be, all the interest and energy of the 
individual, if his libido is free, will be put into it, 
with a feeling of satisfaction within himself. The 
pinch of necessity and fear of breaking conven- 
tional laws are the only forces that compel many 
an adult to work, but any adult working under 
this compulsion has strong infantile reactions to 
his environment. The adult who has ** crossed 
the bridge" from childhood to maturity works be- 
cause he feels better for it, because there is always 

75 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

a force pnsMng him on, because he gets satisfac- 
tion out of the work itself. He does not complain 
of difficulties, but just *^ naturally" works, be- 
cause he is a man obeying nature's creative im- 
pulse, whether following the simple existence of 
a day labourer or the more complicated life of a 
master employer. 

A man can work with creative satisfaction only 
when his needs of development have been fulfilled. 
As the child is blindly groping for the satisfaction 
of his needs, he cannot work or play with the same 
steady purpose as the adult. Attention in a child 
is very short-lived. Prolonged concentration 
upon a single object is impossible. He may oc- 
cupy himself a while with toys that he can move 
about and manipulate, and then his attention is 
claimed by other practical activities. He is inter- 
ested in what he can do by way of actual move- 
ment, but he has looked at a thing, or listened, 
long enough as soon as he finds that it leads to 
nothing else. The chances are that the reason a 
child does not follow a parent's admonitions is 
because the parents are expecting too much under- 
standing from the child and have therefore re- 
quired of him the impossible. 

This also holds good of a child in school, his 
impulses being mainly toward movement and do- 
ing, not toward thinking and knowing. He will 
watch and listen, now longer than he did a year 
ago, but chiefly because his practical interests are 

76 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

wider, and more of the objects around him afford 
openings for action. He is still impatient of mere 
thinking. He has a body which requires constant 
exercise, and it is absurd to expect a child to 
remain long sitting in one position or standing in 
one position and unwise to force him to do so. 
Sensible instructors recognize these facts and ar- 
range for change and recreation in the school, but 
at home the parents are too prone to blame a child 
for wilful disobedience, which isn^t wilful at all. 
The child's attention must at first move with his 
natural cravings and instinctive activities (his 
libido). The parents' difficult task is to recog- 
nize this limitation and to realize how much less 
their words mean to the child than to themselves, 
not from the child's lack of respect for the 
parents, but from his being too inexperienced to 
be able to comprehend and grasp their meaning. 
One has to make the appeal to voluntary atten- 
tion, and this appeal has to be made for some time 
in order to make the child learn things that seem 
dull, although the discipline of learning them will 
be beneficial. He will later on learn that knowl- 
edge is invaluable, as for instance the multiplica- 
tion table, when he begins to work at payment for 
labour by the hour. No child enjoys the drudgery 
of committing the tables to memory, but at an 
early age he should begin his financial career by 
being given a small sum of money for simple ac- 
tivities, and later he will be very glad to use his 

77 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

arithmetic in multiplying his number of hours 
by the rate per hour. 



UNSOLVED CHILDISH PROBLEMS 

Some of the problems are not solved in child- 
hood, and the dissatisfaction due to their being 
unsolved persists into and complicates matters in 
later life, as for instance : Why mother and father 
should go to Europe and have a good time and 
leave the son behind, or why he cannot have an 
auto, keep late hours vdth other boys, but is sent 
away to military school where smoking is for- 
bidden and there is very strict discipline, while, as 
a contrast to his fate, other boys of his age are 
*' hitting it up'' at home and enjoying the freedom 
which he would himself so much enjoy. Another 
boy had an exceedingly strict and severe father 
who, for a slight disobedience of his orders, de- 
prived the son of a very great pleasure. He was 
required to stay at home while all the other mem- 
bers of the family went to see a big parade. The 
disproportion of this punishment would appeal to 
any one, but to the boy himself it was a crushing 
force which took from him all initiative. Since 
his own will was overridden on every occasion by 
the domineering father, he came to the conclusion 
that all efforts on his part were useless, and, as it 
appeared on the outside, he never made any. 

But the truth was that his efforts were exclu- 
78 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

sively mental though not conscious, for in his 
unconscious he was continually mulling over the 
question why his father had been so unreasonable 
in his treatment. When he came for analysis he 
had forgotten all the circumstances and knew only 
the mere fact that he had no initiative. The re- 
sult of the analysis was to show what had de- 
prived him of his initiative and also that his 
father was not so strong a character. On the con- 
trary, he had been, as many domineering persons 
are, merely compensating with an exterior im- 
periousness for an essential but unconscious sense 
of inferiority. This should suggest to all parents 
the possibility that when they feel it incumbent 
on themselves to be exceedingly severe, it is quite 
possible that they too are overcompensating in 
their attitude toward the child for their own un- 
conscious feeling of inferiority. And we know 
that the more unconscious is this feeling, the 
stronger will be this overcompensating severity. 
We cannot be extremely severe unless the reasons 
for not being so are obscured by the unconscious 
mental activity. Otherwise, the milder and more 
rational, but no less strong attitude, the one which 
will have the greater good effect on the child's 
future, will naturally come to the surface in us. 
Even a conscious f eehng that we are too indulgent 
with the child will sometimes cause us to compen- 
sate consciously for this weakness ; but an uncon- 
scious feeling of inferiority is generally mani- 

79 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

fested in the adult in a conscious desire to be 
absolute master over the child, to impress his will 
on it and to have absolute and instant obedience. 

In this self-deception, which most parents prac- 
tise upon themselves, the psychoanalyst finds the 
cause of much that is morbid in the early-cowed 
individuaPs later life. His parents have treated 
him according to the particular twist which they 
have been given by their own unconscious, and he 
sometimes becomes positive and assertive because 
he had unassertive parents and vice versa. It is 
not the children alone, however, who feel this spe- 
cial trend of the character of the parents. Other 
people notice it, too, but are less affected by it in 
proportion to their own experience in the world. 
But on a child the parents ' unjust acts (or unwise, 
if there be an implication of blame in the word 
unjust), has an effect which is all the greater on 
account of the helplessness and plasticity of the 
child's nature. 

The unjust and overbearing parental atmos- 
phere in the world of nervous children cannot be 
cleared because the parents cannot see the actual 
facts of the case. But the neurotics who have 
been treated by psychoanalysis show that a large 
proportion of them have become neurotics because 
of adverse environment in childhood, consisting 
of a parent or both parents who did not under- 
stand the effects of their severity or over-indul- 
gence upon their children. 

80 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

FIXATION OF LIBIDO 

If the environment of the child (at the time 
when reasoning power begins) is in greatest con- 
flict with his instincts, then the libido is held fast 
upon problems of his life, which should not remain 
unsolved for him. A failure on the part of the 
parents to give him the solutions of these intimate 
problems will result in the child's facing even 
greater and wholly unnecessary conflicts in later 
life. This mental condition of the adult, where 
he is troubled by problems which should have been 
solved for him in his childhood by his parents 
(the best service they can ever do him), is techni- 
cally called a ** fixation'' of the libido. In such 
case a part of the att^tion, even in later life, is 
centred (though unconsciously) upon questions 
which are essentially childish ones, and cannot be 
disengaged from them to be wholly devoted to the 
problems which are essentially adult ones. This 
is the true cause of the infantility which I have 
mentioned above as characterizing many club men 
and women bridge players. 

It is sometimes a very difficult matter to re- 
lieve this fixation, to separate the libido of the 
adult from the object to which, on account of per- 
fectly excusable parental ignorance, it has in 
childhood become attached. The results of this 
fixation are most serious, because not the entire 
libido is attached to its infantile object, but only 

81 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

a part of it, the other part being successfully di- 
rected toward the appropriate adult object. The 
result is a ^^ splitting of the libido,** but the por- 
tion of the energy, affections, etc., that remains 
fixed on the unhappy problems of childhood is so 
^reat that the remainder of the libido is not suffi- 
cient to cover the educational, social, financial and 
other demands of the adult *s everyday life. In 
the childhood of such a person the ordinary de- 
mands of his school and home life crowd out the 
thoughts of the unsolved problems. 

These thoughts, however, are not annihilated. 
They merely disappear from the surface, and sink 
into the unconscious where they remain repressed. 
Although they are not recognized by the adult as 
a disturbance, because they were forgotten some- 
time between childhood and maturity, they are 
ever pressing the mind of the adult in order that 
they may gain relief by breaking through into 
conscious life and thought. They seek an outlet 
through emotions in laughter, anger, swearing, 
tears. Laughter is a great opening and relief to 
the repressions. The adult, therefore, finds him- 
self not interested in his surroundings, but absent- 
minded, abstracted and gazing into space with 
no conscious thoughts. On the contrary, the 
thoughts which would have been conscious, had 
they not been repressed, are held in the uncon- 
scious. Sometimes there occurs in the conscious 
life of the adult the blankest apathy, an utter f ail- 

83 



THE CHILD AND THE ADULT 

ure of family affection, because all the affection is 
held in the unconscious by the unhappy incidents 
of child-life which are still rankling there, irritat- 
ing, disturbing and poisoning the mind. They are 
like a wound healed over, but looking red and 
angry on the surface, and with unclean conditions 
underneath. 

Psychoanalysis, like the surgeon's knife, in 
opening the unclean wound, opens the mind, dis- 
covers what are the disturbing thoughts and then 
helps the patient to remove them. In a child such 
a condition as the splitting of the libido or a fixa- 
tion, can usually be seen on the surface and the 
cause will be found to exist in the child's environ- 
ment. If the child can be placed in a new home- 
life, the splitting is more easily healed, but each 
visit to the former environment will reopen the 
split, until the child has acquired sufficient age and 
strength of character to withstand the shock of 
meeting the obstacles which were his undoing. In 
an adult, when the existing cause is buried deep 
under many years of experience and ethical re- 
strictions, a longer time for analysis of the sym- 
poliG thought is necessary. 



83 



CHAPTER V 

MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHH^D 

The child's problems are not confined to the home 
life, but certain forms of nervousness manifest 
themselves only at home. The school life, more 
especially that of boarding-school and college, af- 
fords a great relief to the unconscious struggles. 
I have often heard children in the adolescent 
years say they were looking forward with pleas- 
ure to returning to their comrades and their 
school life. The child who is not strong enough 
to throw off the home influence, the being ' ^ tied to 
mother's apron strings," or the overwhelming 
awe of a despotic father, will find more suffering 
at school if the teacher belongs to a large group of 
instructors who study the principles of logical 
thinking and apply those rules to all mental be- 
haviour without appreciating the lack of reason- 
ing power in childhood, and the conscious and un- 
conscious problems of adolescence. How much 
knowledge has the average teacher of a child's 
mind? The difference between the mature and 
the youthful mind deserves attention. The 
younger a child is, the more closely is his mental 
behaviour tied to the needs of the moment. The 
child is incapable, as we have seen, of working 

84 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

intentionally toward a remote end. He is work- 
ing for self-preservation. For this reason steadi- 
ness of purpose is not in him. It is the parents' 
and teachers' business to help him toward that 
end, but, in the meantime, not to make de- 
mands upon him which presume his knowledge 
of its existence. Making such demands must 
lead to disappointment/ and possibly to injus- 
tice. 

We expect too much of children and in so doing 
are unquestionably selfish ourselves. It is less 
work for a teacher if a pupil recites a perfect 
lesson, even in a parrot-like style. It is selfish 
pride which a parent feels when a child is success- 
ful in school, neat in appearance, obedient to com- 
mands. *^That child is a credit to you," says a 
neighbour, and the parent swells with that selfish- 
ness which we call pride. Later on, when the child 
begins to live for himself, there may be a debit 
page containing what the parent owes the 
child. 

So when we say that to work toward an end, 
to choose means of working, and to learn by ex- 
perience, are general characteristics of mental 
growth as we know it, we must remember that 
these characteristics may be rudimentary and as 
they develop have not always the same form. The 
behaviour of infants makes toward ends whose 
attainment brings satisfaction, but these ends are 
not forethought, nor are they foreseen in the 

85 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

imagination, as are the ends at which the adult 
aims. We, the onlookers, observe merely that the 
child's conduct is a process toward the removal 
of some uneasiness, or the attainment of some 
satisfaction, but the child himself does not regard 
it in that light. In psychoanalytic treatment we 
can see that mental and functional disturbances 
are processes which the patient conducts for the 
removal of some uneasiness in his life, an uneasi- 
ness which comes from the too great difficulty of 
the circumstances in which he finds himself, finan- 
cial, domestic, moral, or what not, and thus post- 
pones the hour of meeting them. Illness is fre- 
quently the regression of the libido to child- 
hood. 



A CASE OF EEGEESSION 

An example of the regression of the libido was 
shown in the case of a man of thirty-seven, mar- 
ried, and having one child, a daughter four years 
old. He worked in a store owned by an older 
brother and himself. The older brother and his 
wife and children were better dressed and seemed 
to have more money than the patient, whose wife 
became jealous. She urged the patient to buy out 
his brother's share of the store, also selected a 
house she wanted the patient to buy for her. The 
patient hesitated to assume so much financial re- 
sponsibility, but his wife declared if he loved her 

86 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

and the child he would be willing to do it. She 
continually pressed him harder and harder to 
rise up to a ^^ higher life'' as she called it, but 
he, being the youngest of the three sons and 
always treated as the little boy of the family, felt 
unequal to satisfy his ambitious wife. His 
thoughts became more and more confused, he 
could not work in the store, complained of pain 
and pressure in his head, especially the forehead 
and eyes. He began the usual rounds of physi- 
cians with prescriptions of rest, change and medi- 
cal treatment, none of which relieved him of the 
ambitious wife. He blamed himself for not doing 
as she wished, he declared she was right and if 
he could only get his head relieved he would buy 
the store from his brother. The first dream he 
brought showed himself as having climbed a 
ladder — or something high — with a small boy. 
There were thousands of people at the top — his 
wife was there, but it was very noisy like a car- 
nival and he did not like it. The little boy dared 
the patient to jump down and said he would jump 
with the patient. So the patient took hold of the 
little boy and they both jumped down together, 
the patient clinging to the boy. This is a perfect 
picture of the patient going down into a neurosis 
— to childhood — to get rid of his wife's ambitions 
for him. He said his mother never cared whether 
he worked or not. His father died when the pa- 
tient was eight years old. 

87 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

ILLNESS A EEGEESSION 

This statement of the regression of the libido to 
childhood is one of the apparent paradoxes of the 
newer psychology, and is to be explained in the 
following manner : When a person is ill he is, in 
more than one way, in a condition very like in- 
fancy and takes the same satisfaction that an in- 
fant takes out of the situation of being an infant. 
He does not himself work, but others work for 
him, ministering to his every need and necessar- 
ily, of course, treating him as if he were an infant. 
He has a nurse, who humours him, amuses him, 
washes him, feeds him. He is free to indulge his 
idle fancies. Any situation approaching this in 
any way has in it more or less of the element of 
infantility. It is quite natural for adults to look 
upon an illness as a rest after great efforts or 
mental strain, and it is quite comprehensible that 
some adults, unconsciously if not consciously re- 
gard the milder degrees of ill health as a means 
by which they may control the situation, and, un- 
consciously at any rate, wish to gain that control 
at any cost, even at the cost of personal pain and 
weakness. In such weakness there is great 
strength, and the unconscious evidently avails it- 
self of this opportunity to secure power, particu- 
larly when the desire for power is blocked in other 
directions, as it inevitably is in ill success or dis- 

88 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

appointment of many kinds. For a person who 
is really ill every one is ready to do favours, and 
particularly for children, because nothing is as 
pathetic as a sick child. In illness the child re- 
gresses to the helplessness of the infant, and by 
his very helplessness exerts a power over all the 
persons in his environment. It thus happens that 
the child who has a serious illness suddenly finds 
himself with every one about him subject to his 
lightest caprice. This unexpected accession of 
power makes a deep and unforgettable impression 
on him, and it is no wonder if he strenuously ob- 
jects to losing his power. In fact, every one 
knows how difficult it is to take away privileges 
from any one. And the child is not expected to 
have any sense of social obligation or to under- 
stand that his requiring all the attention of at 
least one person all the time is an economic waste. 
In fact, very few adults think as much of this as 
they should. 

The aim of every individual should be economic 
productiveness. This consists not merely in 
growing grain or other agricultural products, or 
mining, or even in commerce through making the 
products by transportation available to many 
people; but it also consists in giving pleasure 
through works of art, thus furnishing the emo- 
tional incentive necessary to any kind of produc- 
tive activity. 

89 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

THE CHILDEEN OF THE KICH 

From this point of view, only as much atten- 
tion as is absolutely necessary should be given 
to children, to keep them healthy and wholesomely 
occupied, and to give them little by little the idea 
that it is their duty also to become productive 
in some way. From this point of view the rich 
man's wife, who is usually in no way productive, 
but only destructive of dresses, furniture, auto- 
mobiles, etc., is the worst possible mother, for she 
cannot give the example of productiveness to her 
sons and daughters in the most impressionable 
years of their lives. The idle rich mother, too, is 
utterly unable to do other than harm her children 
if she hands them over to nurses, governesses 
and tutors, unless she be a business woman, be- 
cause she has, on account of her idleness, no 
proper concept herself of what true productive- 
ness is. Children of such homes, therefore, are 
brought up under very serious disadvantages 
compared to those who are forced by circum- 
stances to give heed to the call of the social en- 
vironment, either to help in some way to earn 
their living or to prepare to do so. And the 
enforced limitation of the care of what are called 
less fortunate children, and the lack of oppor- 
tunity to humour them in illness, is in reality an 
advantage, if they can be made to realize the inde- 
pendence, which it will give them in later life. 

90 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

In this connection it should be remembered that 
the children of the rich are jealons of the privi- 
leges and power of their parents, the girls are 
jealous of the mother and the boys are jealous of 
the father. All this goes on normally in the un- 
conscious, even if the manifestations of it never 
appear in conscious thought or action. Also the 
parents are jealous of the youth and vitality, 
sometimes, and freedom from responsibility which 
the children enjoy. In most cases of difficult chil- 
dren there will be found some one of these varia- 
tions well developed in the unconscious of one or 
both parties to any family situation. 

Let the readers of this book examine their own 
mental behaviour and observe how consciousness 
is refreshed and vivified by a change of scene and 
thought, to gain which we go to the theatre or 
travel, and how monotony, as for instance that of 
a prosy sermon, induces sleep and dulls conscious- 
ness. How often both teacher and pupil watch 
the hands of the clock for closing hour. But 
should a telegram come that the teacher's dearest 
friend was arriving how wideawake the teacher 's 
consciousness becomes, as indeed does that of the 
child if dismissed half an hour earlier than usual. 
Change then there must always be, as long as we 
are conscious, a change from work to play, from 
play to rest, and so on, swinging like a pendulum. 
This change preserves our balance, or we go con- 
tinuously in a circle, moving to the place of begin- 

91 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

ning. A life which moves on continuously without 
rest finds itself back at the beginning, which is the 
helplessness of illness or of second childhood. 
The necessity for this change was realized thou- 
sands of years ago, when we were given the fourth 
conunandment. 



THE DISPOSITION- 

In spite of all the many changes in thought, 
there is for all of us no change in the personal 
identity of our experience. The pendulum keeps 
moving the hands of the clock forward, and in this 
sense there is no break in continuity. The man of 
set interests has a fixed purpose, but the child 
shows by the abrupt capering of his mind that he 
does not possess fixity of purpose. While the 
mind is developing, continually unfolding, the 
process is an unbroken one, each new phase being 
a modification of the experience of the previous 
moment. In new circumstances our behaviour is 
built upon the experiences of the past, is but a 
development of them, and is not something en- 
tirely new in every one of its factors. The ma- 
jority of the elements making up any given ex- 
perience is composed of tendencies produced by 
past experiences, which, as they are modified by 
the new surroundings, are changed. They do not 
retain their original form but themselves produce 
effects that may be traced as factors of subse- 

92 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

quent mental behaviour. The sum of these 
factors at any given stage of mental develop- 
ment constitutes what is called the disposition. 
By this I do not mean disposition as we speak of 
a sweet disposition or a surly disposition, but a 
much more inclusive and fundamental arrange- 
ment of mental factors which make up the whole 
of the individual 's personality. 

It is evident that the mental factors entering 
into the child's disposition, understood in this 
broad sense, are very different from those of the 
adult's disposition. The difference between child 
and adult is much like that between a boy's push- 
mobile and a high-powered motor car. Only one 
who is deficient in judgment or sense would ex- 
pect the same service from the toy as that from 
the real automobile. But it is an almost universal 
failing among parents to expect the child to be 
like an adult in action and feeling, and it is 
practically impossible for the majority of adults 
to understand and make allowances for the limita- 
tions of the child in the mental and moral spheres. 
With remarkable irony the adult does make al- 
lowances for the child's physical limitations, and 
frequently goes out of his way to give the child 
physical help where it is least needed, at the same 
time expecting him to show traits of the mental 
and moral character which are quite beyond his 
stage of development. It is folly to send a boy 
on a man's errand, but we are doing it all the time. 

93 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

CONATION 

I will now ask the reader to observe certain 
broad aspects of mental life which have been im- 
plied in what has been already said. We have, 
for example, noticed that a certain purpose of 
conduct, working to relieve uneasiness or attain 
satisfaction characterizes the behaviour of the 
child, and of animals, as the dog, and indeed that 
this quality is significant of mental activity in 
general. The student will recognize at once that 
he is not merely a passive being, like a stick tossed 
by the waves. He feels himself to be a craving 
and a striving force, which we call the libido. He 
is not content to be the sport of his environment, 
but endeavours actively to fit himself to it, or to 
adapt it to his needs. The actions of parents 
often make it very difficult for a child to attain 
any reasonable degree of satisfaction of this crav- 
ing. Their treatment is sometimes like a con- 
tinual attempt to do things for the child, to do 
things which the child wants to do himself, and 
will profit only by doing himself. Many a child's 
play has been spoiled by the advent of an adult 
who tries to tell the child how to do it, and in the 
pnd does it '^for" him — a much mistaken idea of 
the proper meaning of the word **for." Much 
better would it be if the child were in such a case 
treated with a good measure of what has been 
neatly termed ^* wholesome neglect/' 

94 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

COGNITION 

This feature of mental behaviour, where the in- 
dividual gets most satisfaction from expending 
his own energies in the attainment of an end, be 
it an immediate or a remote end, is what the psy- 
chologist has in mind when he calls it "conative'' 
(from the Latin conari — to strive) ; and the psy- 
choanalyst calls it the urge or striving of the 
libido, always tending toward some end which will 
give, satisfaction. But we must also notice that 
this mental activity is not a mere striving to no 
purpose. There is a state of awareness of some 
degree at every stage. The intellectual process 
causes the dog to change his path when obstructed 
by an obstacle, and enables a man to conceive the 
principle of duty and of resisting temptation. 
The fact that mental activity is always a process 
of knowing in some way is expressed by the phy- 
chologist as the cognitive aspect of mental be- 
haviour (Latin cognoscere — to know). And every 
stage of self-observation is a further stage in the 
conation or purpose, and in the cognition of our 
own behaviour. 

FEELING 

But, the student will say, and rightly too, that 
we have not yet exhausted all we find in our 
mental behaviour. We are not merely knowing 
and striving creatures, making toward ends and 

95 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

aware of objects, but we have left out all the 
warmth and intimate character of the life that is 
peculiar to each person. We have left out the 
feelings, what the psychologists call the affective 
side of mental behaviour. Our experience is not 
merely conation plus cognition (striving plus 
knowing). It is at the same time being affected 
in some way, a mode of feeling which we call the 
emotions. Thus the striving and knowing in the 
effort toward adjustment of self to environment 
is accompanied by the emotions with reactions of 
forces constructive or destructive. The emotional 
reactions of affection, pleasure and interest we 
call constructive, those of fear, anger or dis- 
pleasure are destructive. In the child, pleasure 
depends largely upon the relation of sensory ex- 
perience to the trend of activity at the moment. 
No experience is pleasant to us if it interrupts and 
obstructs our work and desires. Successful prog- 
ress is pleasant. When the ball or shot goes just 
where it is aimed, the pleasure and satisfaction 
are more intense. If we can teach our children 
that an unexpected obstacle can for a moment be 
unpleasant because it baffles, but the pleasure is 
great when it is overcome, we do them a great 
service. Not by commands but by encouragement 
can we best teach them. On the other hand, an 
insurmountable obstacle in the path of a child's 
growth and progress against which he struggles 
vainly, as a prisoner against prison walls, is un- 

96 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

pleasant proportionally to the strength of his de- 
sire for that which it prevents him from attain- 
ing. The more anxious one is to keep an appoint- 
ment, the greater one^s annoyance if the automo- 
bile breaks down on the way. Here again the 
parents and teachers must be careful to take fair 
measures of the children under their care, and not 
to judge the young minds by their own. Children 
are more easily discouraged by obstacles ; the end 
to be achieved does not loom so large in their lives 
as we imagine. We need to make their courses 
relatively smooth or they soon lose heart. It is 
impossible to overemphasize the great importance 
of the child's inability to keep in view the purpose 
for which we want him to work. They are also 
weaker than we in the power of analysis, and in 
face of difficulties they often make wild attempts 
at the truth to protect themselves in fear of the 
overpowering authority. Then we call them un- 
truthful. Indeed we find that a lad's method of 
dealing with difficulties is the more ^*wild,'' the 
more anxious he is about the result. 

The child whose mind is unable to follow the 
monotony of school and lessons, who is either too 
sluggish or too unstable, should be carefully 
watched for the reactions which stimulate this 
sluggishness or unstability. Keenest attention is 
sometimes aroused by change in what is familiar. 
Change, if not too extreme, gives scope for more 
vigorous exercise of our activities of perception 

97 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

and thought, while monotonous experience con- 
stricts them. Unsatisfactory results with chil- 
dren may not be the child's fault, but the teacher's 
or parents', who are not able to keep their own 
problems in the background when dealing with 
children. The wild, free nature of the child may 
be so restricted and restrained by his surround- 
ings that he cannot give vent to the natural rough 
and tumble of his nature. The effeminate side of 
his nature is gradually overdeveloped. 

AN "impossible" BOY 

A boy of fourteen came under my observation 
for being * impossible at home." He was rather 
undersized, but healthy in all respects, — good di- 
gestion, sleeping well, etc. — although rather deli- 
cate in appearance. He delighted in teasing the 
servants, often causing them to leave after a few 
days, which brought despair to his mother. His 
method of teasing was to jump at them around 
corners or open doors, going into the kitchen and 
freely helping himself to anything he wanted, 
leaving the ice-box door open or spilling on the 
floor or table whatever he helped himself to. He 
was utterly regardless of any one's feelings or 
convenience. The family cat and dog rushed 
away when he approached, for he always jumped 
and shouted at them. He "shooed" the canary 
to make it flutter around in the cage. In fact, 

98 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

pets were impossible where he was. He talked 
much of murder and of people committing suicide. 
Walking on a village street one foggy night we 
passed a yard with much shrubbery. ^'A fine 
place for a murder/' he commented. When a 
missing member of the family was inquired after, 
he would say: *^I guess he has jumped out of the 
window," or **He has gone into the bathroom to 
make an end of himself." 

Analysis made it evident that there was a 
severe conflict going on in the boy's unconscious 
about what to do concerning some unbearable 
situation. His real enemy, the killing of whom 
would have been one solution of his mental con- 
flict, was his father. Of course no one, not even 
the boy himself, was aware of this, though any 
one who knew all the details of the case and took 
in the whole situation impartially and merely as 
a concrete physical and spiritual environment of 
the boy, could realize that the father was the 
greatest obstruction to the boy's natural cravings. 
The boy was treated with absolute lack of under- 
standing, or even consideration, by a completely 
selfish father. The libido which meets rebuffs 
at every turn naturally seeks to destroy them, 
even though on the outside the unfortunate in- 
dividual complies with all the requirements made 
upon him. The boy never was consulted as to 
what he would like to do, and after a while formed 
the habit of obediently saying, ^*Yes, father," to 

99 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

every command, and became externally a very 
passive, ladylike boy. It was this superficial 
meekness which caused the conflict above referred 
to. It was this situation which irresistibly turned 
the child's mind to thoughts of murder and death. 
Naturally these thoughts could not be consciously 
associated with the real cause of them, the father, 
and so the boy expressed, by his treatment of the 
pets, the servants, and by stealing the food from 
the ice-box the unconscious desires for destruction 
which were gradually developing in his mind. At 
the present time he is not well, occasionally faints 
away and is said to have a weak heart, and no 
wonder. He will hold a position for several years, 
but with no interest in advancing, just *^ staying 
puf and plodding along. The father congratu- 
lates himself he has managed well in bringing up 
that boy. Ten years hence, when he sees the boy 
in the same position without advancement he 
will blame the boy, while we have seen that 
the boy himself, was aware of this, though any 
assertion. 

Another case with different results. There was 
the same type of despotic father, who freely used 
corporal punishment, spoiling both the rod and 
the child. When twelve years old the boy was 
fun-loving, with superabundance of energy, and 
his mischievous pranks or disobedience, such as 
being late for dinner, careless in his toilette and 
other boyish failings, were severely punished with 

100 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUE OF THE CHILD 

hard thrashings. The boy would be sent to bed 
where he would cry and sob with the physical 
pain, to say nothing of the wounded young man- 
hood. This boy had too mi^ch spirit to become 
crushed and effeminate. He was physically large, 
and became hard and lawless, was expelled from 
school, would not work, ran away to a western 
mining camp, gambled, was utterly v^^ithout pur- 
pose and became the problem of the family. 



ANOTHEE CASE 

Another boy, now thirty-three, drifted from one 
position to another, but has never been able to 
separate himself from the home influence, which 
was this time a mother who would never allow 
him to play in ways which soiled his clothing. He 
was dressed in velvet suits, and shown how much 
more attractive he was than the bad boys with 
dirty hands and ^'smelly" clothes. He grew tall, 
became a scholarly lad with polished manners, led 
his class in college, then developed dramatic 
tastes, playing always in tragedy. His parents 
were horrified with his stage propensities and 
forbade them. Then came a nervous breakdown 
and an analysis was sought, after which he had a 
taste of real freedom of life in a cowboy's exist- 
ence. Afterward he entered business life. Many 
other cases could be cited of the adult life unfitted 
for success, cases in which, when an analysis has 

101 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

set them right, we have seen that the emotional 
life had been totally inadequate in youth. 



There is a period called the latency period of 
childhood which occurs about the time of the sec- 
ond dentition, when the helplessness of childhood 
is succeeded by a full-fledged young animal who 
wants to try his new-found powers. He is ready 
to run wild, if opportunity offers, and then is the 
time parents should make home the most attrac- 
tive place and freely allow the boy's companions 
to come and go. ^^I have only one son, but I 
might just as well have a dozen, the house is 
always full of boys,'* said a wise mother, who 
endeavoured to make home the most attractive 
place for her son and placed no restrictions on 
muddy shoes and noise. However, she mastered 
the situation by building a playhouse in the yard 
of their suburban home. A partition was built 
across one end, and there were placed the treas- 
ures. The outer room was the general meeting 
place of all the boys in the neighbourhood. An 
occasional feast of sandwiches, cake and lemon- 
ade made the house popular, and while other 
mothers were telephoning for their sons to come 
home, this mother's mind was at rest. Her son 
was always home, yet having perfect freedom of 
play and action. He organized a boys' club, with 

102 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

flowing robes for the officers, and how real and im- 
pressive it was to those boys! And yet the im- 
posing robes were most simple, and inexpensive, 
made of that material known as *' Turkey red.'* 
(Red the colour of life.) A secret motto and grip 
were agreed upon. Each boy had to sharpen his 
wits to present some original thoughts for their 
meetings in order to claim attention from the 
others. Years have passed since that particular 
playhouse was used. Many of the boys later 
held high military positions in the army in the 
great European conflict. Did the opportunities 
offered in that playhouse for arousing ambitions 
of leadership carry those boys through to high 
positions of trust? I think so. Unconsciously 
those boys had learned the secret of success, 
namely, to be doers, not dreamers. ^'Do noble 
things, not dream them all day long.'' They 
wanted to show the other boys of the village that 
to belong to their club was an honour, and they 
were kept busy wondering how to manage and 

make the outside boys realize that the club 

was a real club and going to last forever, so real it 
seemed to them. 

A wise mother, with a troublesome boy who was 
always backward in school, although very bright 
otherwise, found it interesting to read of the 
school days of many prominent men and learn that 
Spencer, Carlyle, Ruskin and Shakespeare were 
poor students. She wondered exceedingly why 

103 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

such minds who became world-renowned, should 
have had such boyhood troubles. She dimly sus- 
pected the studies were not right nor suitable for 
her boy, but questioning him did no good. He 
did not know what he wanted, while the father de- 
clared she was only finding excuses for the boy. 
Schools and colleges are dimly seeing that the 
student may know better what interests him than 
the professors, and thus they are offering elective 
courses, where a student may select the subjects 
which appeal to him. True, the student may fol- 
low the line of least resistance, and select the 
easier subjects to enable him to get a college de- 
gree, but why does he do it I There is a reason 
why he prefers play to work for which he is not 
entirely responsible. He will work through and 
college will help him get a firmer grasp of him- 
self. Our knowledge is not entirely gained from 
textbooks and it is one of the many surprises 
awaiting a young physician that he must learn to 
make a diagnosis where he cannot follow the text- 
book. And so the college gives only a founda- 
tional knowledge for the young man to build his 
life on. In this respect the teacher, especially if 
he has not sufficient understanding of the psy- 
chology of behaviour, sometimes makes it difficult 
for his pupils by narrowing do^^m the object of 
college training to what is learned from pedagogi- 
cal textbooks. The college boy has probably 
grown out of the purely instinctive and emulative 

104 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

stage of behaviour, but as a rule his interests are 
in the adolescent stage. If the boy learns from 
fear of his professors and of disgrace, as well as 
duty and self-respect, the knowledge learned re- 
mains external to him. Attention with eifort 
is never proof for long against distracting in- 
fluences. 

Thus the teacher should regard the appeal to 
voluntary attention as a step toward formations 
of new interests in the beginning of college life. 
In the preparatory school the students' impulses 
are mainly toward movement and doing, not to- 
ward thinking and knowing. Sensible instruction 
recognizes this fact and although the school disci- 
pline results in submissive, orderly classes, regu- 
larly learning tasks, we know the boys lead two 
lives and that richness of interests belongs to the 
life out of school. Therefore, the preparatory 
schools, taking their students through the adoles- 
cent age, so full of temptations and dangers, must 
limit their privileges, keep strict watch over their 
habits and require complete obedience. Upon the 
entrance to college the student meets a changed 
condition. There is absolute freedom, he can 
smoke, stay up all night if he chooses, but the ex- 
periences of the freshman show him the foot of 
the ladder which he must climb in some humilia- 
tion, especially if he joins a fraternity. While 
college hazing is condemned because it reached 
such extremes that life was endangered, the fresh- 

105 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

man cap, required by the older students, is one of 
the greatest safeguards to the new liberty of the 
college boy. He must always wear it. Breaking 
the rule meets with swift and sure punishment and 
is more efficacious than that administered by legal 
processes. The college professor will arouse the 
interest and intelligence of his pupils by present- 
ing his information so that they can assimilate it 
and not merely repeat it by rote. He wants them 
not only to remember, but to understand, for in- 
telligence grows, like an organism, only by what it 
can assimilate. 

ATTENTION 

Attention is a selective process. If yuu listen 
intently to music you cannot at the same time 
watch the faces of the audience; if you are ab- 
sorbed in a book you may not hear the clock 
strike. In all attention you are aware, though 
more vaguely, of other things beside that upon 
which you are more intent. If you read the para- 
graph attentively your attention is concentrated 
upon the meaning, but you must also see the 
printed words, though not as clearly as if looking 
for a word misprinted. When we try to concen- 
trate upon a particular subject we make mental 
movements of adjustment. In the child we see 
signs of inattention and know he is unable to make 
the mental adjustment. The parent and teacher 
should be careful to distinguish this inability to 

106 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

pay attention in pupils and children from merely- 
misdirected attention. The latter is due to bore- 
dom with their lessons and to the superior attrac- 
tion of other things ; the former is very probably 
due to hunger, ill health, fatigue or bad ventila- 
tion of the class room (and in the home, to too 
much confinement and repression), thus throwing 
the child too much upon himself when he needs 
outside activities. The difference of bodily atti- 
tude is a sure guide for watchful eyes. In one 
case the child is alert, looking for something or 
thinking actively about something; in the others, 
his whole body relaxes, his eyes look dull and face 
lacks animation. Is it not absurd to punish a child 
for inattention? Worse than absurd, for the inat- 
tention is usually caused by our ignorance. 

The amount of initiative and perseverance a 
child shows is important. He is usually very per- 
sistent in his play, works up to his strength in 
attempting to lift heavy weights. Do not help 
him. The chances are you will annoy him and he 
will not learn his strength. Mme. Montessori 
wisely warns us not to seize the shovel when the 
child is filling his pail with sand and fill it for him. 
He needs the muscular exercise and the motor 
control he is gaining. Notice the child's delight 
in his success. Try to put yourself in his place 
and endeavour to feel the satisfaction which re- 
sults from his accomplishing the full pail of sand 
which he lifts and empties. What a stunting ef- 

107 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 

feet on that child to fill the pail for him ! In the 
psychoanalysis of an adult, how often we find the 
beginning of the problems so disturbing to success 
to have been misdirected efforts in childhood, not 
one effort, but many, which grouped and woven to- 
gether have made a bizarre pattern of life. It re- 
quires delicate handling to separate the warp and 
woof of past experiences and arrange them in a 
strong, well-woven material to stand the great 
strain of life's pressure. 

There are times in our own lives when we need 
great strength and power to meet the sorrows and 
disappointments we have to face. How do we get 
the strength, where does it come from! Why are 
some leaders and other people of splendid 
physique and great courage, truly efficient and 
capable? If, when you were young, you had a 
large circle of acquaintances and visited them, 
seeing intimately the daily family life, recall the 
personality and influence of the parents, the re- 
actions of the children, and you will find the ques- 
tion answered. In a large family of children with 
a capable father and too gentle and indulgent 
mother you will find more capable daughters than 
sons. Seldom more than one capable son, even if 
there are several. While an erratic or nervous 
father, with a capable mother, produces able sons, 
and daughters who have difficulty in adjusting 
their lives to their environment. The only child 
has been condemned as being spoiled, a weakling, 

108 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

selfish, disagreeable to associate with or to marry. 
Herbert Spencer was an only child. Every family 
has an ^'only child,'' the one who receives more 
attention and encouragement, which may destroy 
him or open larger opportunities for success, de- 
pending upon the parents. We, therefore, do not 
condemn the only child. 



BUEBANK ON EDUCATION 

Luther Burbank has shown us by his work in 
changing the character of the fruit that the early 
development is the most important. Just as we 
make a white blackberry by a selective process, 
so we can make a black life a white life by a proc- 
ess of elimination used in psychoanalysis. Bur- 
bank plants acres of seeds. As soon as those 
seeds have grown through the first phase of seed 
development which means that a good root-growth 
has started, he walks through the rows of plants 
and marks those he wants preserved, the rest are 
thrown away. He works thus for years and by 
elimination, in time, changes the colour of the 
blackberry, takes the seeds from the orange, the 
pit from the plum. While those changes are not 
all considered an improvement and the white 
blackberry is not on the market and perhaps 
would not be accepted, so tenaciously do people 
cling to methods of the past, we learn what can be 
done with life by the elimination of certain traits 

109 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

and trends of character througli psychoanalysis . 
These may be fears, phobias, functional neu- 
roses, or hysterical pains, which physicians can 
never cure, although they often use the knife in 
their belief that the body controls the mind, as 
though our brains were in the ends of our muscles 
instead of the ends of the nerves. We can turn 
misery into happiness, and make a useful and ac- 
ceptable human being out of an invalid and some- 
times out of a criminal/ The applications of these 
psychological methods will not be admitted by 
people who want to give way to the lower instincts 
buried in the unconscious. We are not ladies and 
gentlemen in the unconscious thought; only by 
self-control in following the conventions of life, 
observing laws which civilization has worked out 
as best for the preservation of the race, do we 
become gentle. The unconscious mind is primitive, 
archaic, savage. The savage does not want to 
preserve the race ; he is not an adult in the pres- 
ent-day meaning, he belongs to the children of 
the race. 

A man of Mr. Burbank's philosophical cast of 
mind could not fail to give a vast deal of thought, 
j&rst and last, to the question of a possible applica- 
tion of knowledge gained in the experimental 
garden to better development of the human race. 

1 It is an interesting fact that Germany would not accept the 
methods of psychological analysis, as Professor Freud has stated 
in his review of the countries using these methods of relieving 
the nervous patients from their sujfferings. 

110 



MENTAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHILD 

Mr. Burbank has not only thought but has written 
and talked on the subject very extensively. He 
has, concerning the development of the human 
plant, very pronounced ideas that are the out- 
growth of his experimental studies with plant life. 
In psychoanalysis we understand that the same 
general principles apply to all life. It is exceed- 
ingly interesting to find Mr. Burbank approach- 
ing the same knowledge through the vegetable 
kingdom. He has been able to make tangible appli- 
cation of his studies in this field. As a practical 
horticulturist he has observed that everything de- 
pends upon the treatment the seedling receives the 
first few weeks or days of its life. He takes in- 
finite pains to provide just the right environment 
of soil, conditions of moisture, sunlight and shel- 
ter from the wind. He has seen it demonstrated 
times without number that the future growth and 
strength of the plant depended upon this early 
treatment. Making application to the human be- 
ing, he believes that few people fully understand 
how largely the body and mind of the child are 
moulded by the environing influence of infancy. 
He urges very strenuously that life should be 
made agreeable for the young child, that it be 
kept in the open, allowed to play, to come into con- 
tact with nature, and to do the things in which 
childhood naturally delights. "When the child has 
reached the school age Mr. Burbank would have 
its tasks less laborious and exacting than they 

111 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHiD 

sometimes are. He would pay heed to all stages 
of the child's bodily development, knowing full 
well that fine blossoms do not come from dwarfed 
plants. 

In a word, he would make the environment of 
childhood and adolescence healthful, stimulative 
and pleasure-giving. Only by so doing can Mr. 
Burbank secure the best results with his plants, 
and only by a comparable line of action in our 
treatment of the child, can we count on making 
the most of the coming human generation. 



112 



i«: 



CHAPTER VI 

DEFENCE REACTIONS 

We know that extreme conditions in the environ- 
ment are hurtful or even destructive to certain 
forms of life, as the cold of the polar regions chills 
and prevents life, extreme heat burns and de- 
stroys, emptiness starves and an excess cloys and 
bursts, — but we perhaps do not apply that knowl- 
edge to the mental, psychic and emotional environ- 
ment of life. We use the metaphors of '^throwing 
cold water,'' ^* throwing a wet blanket,'' ** damp- 
ening one's ardour," in the sense of chilling en- 
thusiasm, and as in a sudden shock creating func- 
tional disturbance. We speak of the ^^ white heat 
of passion," which seems to burn up the oxygen 
of our blood as though by a fiery dose of alcohol. 
We speak of * 'bursting with news ' ' and of ' ' starv- 
ing for fun and a good time. ' ' Curiously enough, 
we often speak without realizing that in using 
such figures of speech we are stating vital condi- 
tions, and we would feel it weakness to consider 
them seriously. To give way to enthusiasm, to 
demand happiness when we have made strenuous 
effort, and to insist upon a recreation of pleasure 
and satisfaction after a hard day's work seem to 
us rather a weakness of character than our just 

113 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

due. So difficult is it for us to outgrow the habit 
of thought of our puritanical ancestors, suitable 
to their simple life but ill adapted to entirely 
modern needs. When the urge of life pushing out- 
ward, from the invisible and unknown force 
within, which we call nature, meets any of the 
unfavourable conditions an effort is made by this 
life to protect itself against destruction from 
these conditions. The animal life in frigid zones 
protects itself by very thick fur ; there is no vege- 
tation and heating food is supplied in fats. In 
the tropics the animal life is protected from the 
burning rays by thick foliage, while plentiful 
fruits provide cooling food instead of the heating 
fat and blubber of the Arctic regions. Hitherto, 
no attempt has been made to understand the neu- 
rotic patient as one who fails to establish an ade- 
quate defence against the unfavourable environ- 
ment and who seeks refuge in a neurosis and ill- 
ness, thus to escape the unbearable — or, as one 
who is so overcome by his surroundings that he 
attempts no defence and is being destroyed by this 
leech-like fastening of another human where his 
life force is drawn out. 

Excessive affections, or, as we say, ** being loved 
to death '^ furnish an atmosphere comparable to 
the heat of the tropics which has the same etfect 
upon the person subjected to it as does the intense 
heat of overpowering affections. Intense heat 
from a tropical sun affects the head and brain, and 

lU 



DEFENCE EEACTIONS 

so the victim upon whom excessive affection falls 
is withered and blighted. We find this true in 
married life where the lov,e of one mate seizes the 
other mate with a death-like clutch, leaving no 
freedom of action. This is very well described in 
a poem by James Oppenheim, called **The Cling- 
ing Arms. ' ' 

**Push off the clinging arms! 
There is only death in this strangle-hold ; 

even if we call it love . . . 
The mother who cares too much for her child, 
Or the husband for his wife, 
They are keeping sheltered and confined what 

should be free and hardy, toughened for 

battle ! 

**Nay, there is no real love in this binding: 

It is more often a sense of waste and futility, 

And a fierce bickering and quarreling . . . 

Shake free! 

Know love in freedom; know love in separa- 
tion : 

Give the soul its own self to support it, and 
take off your arms ! 

Do honour to the divinity of another human 
being 

By trusting its power to go alone.'' 

The nervous person does not present a well- 
rounded life; on the contrary, the outline of his 
development will show an indentation reaching to 
childhood. During an analysis the curve down- 

115 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

ward should be lifted, gradually filling out to a 
well-adjusted line, which, however, must be ef- 
fected by the patient himself, as he sees the dif- 
ficulty to be overcome and marks the weak spot in 
his development. The defence reaction which a 
person has used to protect his sensitive make-up 
is the attempt at defence by reacting with some 
manner of compensation to himself against the 
threatening danger. When a child is forced to 
obey unreasonable wishes of those in authority — 
parents or teacher — he, by resisting all authority, 
defends himself from the threatened destruction 
of the ^* something within him that wants to 
(grow'' and which may be called character. Such 
resistance is called negativism, and you may be 
very sure sometime in the life of that individual 
there has been an unwise, over-exacting authority. 

DEFENSIVE SPEECH AND SILENCE 

Another instance of defence reaction is seen in 
aphasia, when a person cannot use the right words 
to express his thoughts and apparently loses con- 
trol of speech. In the unconscious there is a 
secret which the aphasia victim is afraid of be- 
traying, and he guards it by using inappropriate 
words. A more detailed description of such cases 
will be given in a later work. Again we see the 
effort of self-protection in the silent person. He 
uses his silence as a defence against betrayal of 

116 



DEFENCE REACTIONS 

both conscious and unconscious wishes, feeling 
dimly their presence by a great longing and lone- 
liness. He really does not know why he cannot 
study or work continuously toward a goal and is 
dissatisfied, abstracted and silent. Weak intel- 
lectual power frequently sets a defence reaction 
of extreme care about the personal appearance. 
A deformity or crippled condition, too, will try to 
compensate with a defence reaction by attempting 
to appear very learned, very talented, or very 
vivacious. The person affecting such learning has 
little or no knowledge, but a mere smattering of 
words and catch phrases. The talents are not cul- 
tivated for the pure enjoyment of an emotional 
outlet but are forced and lack spontaneousness. 
Life is full of defence reactions by which the in- 
dividual seeks self-protection from uncomfortable 
situations. 

But, on the other hand, a life sometimes starts 
amidst surroundings where no form of defence is 
possible, no adaptation can be effected, and the 
individual life submits to a complete surrender. 
A stunted growth results and we call a child in 
such circumstances ^^ retarded.'^ In later years 
there may be wild bursts of temper, even epilepsy, 
as futile efforts toward defence reactions. The 
life which surrenders, rather than sets up a de- 
fence reaction, remains exceedingly infantile ; the 
mind makes no effort to reason out any given sit- 
uations or decide which course of action to follow, 

117 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

and becomes very indolent. There is frequently 
thymus trouble, the child grows very large and 
heavy, face full and with high colour; but he is 
mentally and physically lazy. I have found the 
cases showing thymus trouble which have been 
brought to me for analysis, have revealed a his- 
tory of favouritism and petting. Neither the child 
nor the parent has realized that fact, and the 
parents are sometimes quite indignant with the 
questions asked in taking the history of the case, 
as if science should not interfere with personal 
feelings. 

AN IDOLIZED DAUGHTEE 

One case was a woman of forty. She was the 
youngest of five children, her father was a physi- 
cian. At the birth of the fourth boy, the mother 
was very ill for a long time ; as years passed and 
no other children were born the mother longed for 
a daughter. After nine years of waiting the fifth 
child, a daughter, was born. This child received a 
most royal welcome. The brothers told of a wil- 
ful, spoiled child who was never corrected; the 
boys always had to wait upon her and were never 
allowed to make a sound to disturb her. They con- 
sidered her a princess, very beautiful, very won- 
derful, and she accepted their worship as her 
right. She was openly told how pretty she was 
when a child. (In later life she was stout and her 
face was so red, full and heavy, it gave her a look 

118 



DEFENCE REACTIONS 

of coarseness.) The whole family had to deny 
themselves that she might have dainty clothes. 
She was very devoted to her mother, showed no 
affection for her father and was only moderately 
fond of her brothers. To her mother she was 
always the little baby girl, and she reacted as such 
without any attempt at defence. At school she 
was not popular with other girls as she wanted 
her own way and would not stand contradic- 
tion. 

As the adolescent age passed she had no love 
affairs. When she saw her former schoolmates 
marrying, she was sad, and built up imaginary 
romances about herself. Her brothers married, 
but she was too irritable to keep any friends, quar- 
relled with every one but her mother. There was 
no mental retardation, which I believe to be 
largely due to the intellectual tastes of her family. 
They read aloud evenings ; at the table conversa- 
tion was very instructive and she unconsciously 
absorbed the subjects and information others 
were talking about. After the mother's death, 
when our patient was thirty years old, the family 
funds were very low, and she tried to live with her 
married brothers. No one, however, could show 
her the same watchful, tender care as her mother 
and she quarrelled with all her relatives. As she 
was well-educated, she attempted clerical posi- 
tions, but she became an idiot savant, a well-edu- 
cated woman, very wise in theory, but with no 

119 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

more knowledge of life than an infant. She re- 
turned to live alone in her father's honse, found 
a ready market for the family heirlooms of furni- 
ture, silver and jewels and lived on the proceeds 
until they were all sold. 

^'Be good to little sister,'' were the mother's 
dying words to her sons, and when they found the 
sister with an empty house and in need, they 
brought her food and money. They had tried to 
remonstrate with her to stop the sale of the be- 
loved heirlooms and told her she was intensely 
selfish. In great rage she had ordered them out 
of the house. When the end of the sales came, she 
accepted the food, or money in her usual way — as 
her just rights — but she set up some hallucina- 
tions which her weak personality had no power 
to overcome. She thought that all food or money 
which came within three feet of her was poison 
to any one else, and the air within three feet of 
her body was tainted and poisonous to others to 
breathe, showing that she knew in her unconscious 
she had lived in an unhealthy way. She could not 
or would not touch metal (she had sold family 
silver and jewelry) and was afraid of it. She 
would not touch her foot to the floor and said it 
was wrong to walk — she refused to walk. (She 
had followed wrong paths all her life.) Very late 
in life she attempted to defend herself against 
further ruin by the mode of defence which out- 
wardly seemed to be hallucinations. 

120 



DEFENCE REACTIONS 

AN IDOLIZED SON 

Another instance of a life being clogged and 
cloyed with sweetness was that of a boy born the 
eighth child after seven sisters. The parents had 
quite despaired of having a son, and the mother 
said she really felt she was in heaven when told 
her child was a boy. She never tired of looking at 
the baby son, held him in her arms, was reluctant 
to part from him, even to lay him down to sleep. 
He was a large, heavy child, evidently the exces- 
sive fat was due to overfeeding. His mother said 
that as a young child he tired very easily and 
would lie down when the others were playing. He 
was backward in walking and talking. It occurred 
to me the child was kept in a constant state of 
fatigue from so much handling from the seven 
sisters who were always begging to hold him, and 
the mother, who used to carry him to a vacant part 
of the house for the joy of holding him undis- 
turbed. He was made the pet and plaything of the 
family until his eighth year. 

His mother had intended teaching him herself, 
but when he refused to learn she concluded it was 
because she did not know how to teach the begin- 
ning of the ^^ three R's'' and sent him to a pri- 
mary school. After a week his teacher refused 
him as a pupil, he would make no effort to learn, 
she said. A governess was engaged, who declared 
the boy was deficient. The parents became thor- 

121 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHn.D 

oughly alarmed and carried the boy from one 
specialist to another with discouraging results. 
Radiographs of the brain were taken — no dis- 
coveries were made. The large, overgrown boy 
was declared to be of low mentality. He was sent 
to a school for deficient children and there learned 
reading, writing and some simple arithmetic. 
Then he was again taken to specialists for some 
encouraging news, but the mental tests placed him 
as a child of six years. None of these physicians 
had any knowledge of analytical psychology, 
therefore did not realize the great importance of 
the environment, in which the child had lived, as 
being the chief factor in promoting or retarding 
development. 

When he was eleven the boy was sent to an- 
other home among older children and to a boys' 
school where he had to learn to take his place. 
He was shocked at the boys' rough play; they 
threw chalk and erasers at each other, teased him 
by taking his lunch and hiding his cap. When told 
he must learn to defend himself among boys, he 
rose to the occasion and in a month the boys found 
they got the worst of it in their attempts to tease 
him. He learned his daily lessons and the intelli- 
gence increased very rapidly. 

DEFENCE AGAINST CHILDEEN 

There are occasions when parents should set up 
defence reactions against their children. When, 

122 



DEFENCE EEACTIONS 

for instance, a child, more especially a boy, still 
lives on at home long after he should be leading 
an independent existence there is great danger of 
weakening the boy's character. He will wait to 
be forced to do things rather than act on his own 
initiative. It is so nice to put the responsibility 
of our actions on some one else, to sleep soundly 
until called and to have some one make us go to 
bed when we are too lazy to make the effort to 
get up and go. Laziness is an inherent quality of 
animal and human life, and should not be con- 
fused with the need of rest after exertion. Chil- 
dren who have had too much waiting on by fond 
parents are apt to become what we call ^* spoiled,'' 
which is indeed a descriptive term. 

A family of father and mother with three sons 
and a daughter — all grown — are living in one 
apartment of eight rooms without a maid. Such 
a nervous lot of people are they that one wonders 
why they cannot understand the need of separat- 
ing, and yet I have heard the parents congratu- 
lated upon being able to have the children all with 
them. One son is morose and silent, which is his 
defence against too much family, another son is 
incorrigible, never home, was expelled from every 
school and will not stay long in any business. 
The third son is an alcoholic and the despair of 
his family, the daughter is very irritable, tearful 
and apparently a delicate girl. The father is 
very sarcastic and in a teasing way constantly 

123 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 

annoys his family. The mother is a woman of 
artistic tastes which she has no opportunity to 
gratify because of her large family cares. The 
sons would like to live away but feel it would 
break up the home if all left, and that the parents 
need them; the parents hold their children tightly 
and yet wish the sons could get an independent 
start. 

Another illustration is a family of eight chil- 
dren : one alcoholic son, one deficient son, one in- 
corrigible son, ^Ye daughters quarrelling, argu- 
ing and generally disturbing one another. The 
parents have the mistaken idea of keeping them 
all home. 

Alcohol is a favourite method of defence 
against cramped, shut-in conditions of life. It is 
used by those who need greater emotional outlet ; 
and the would-be alcoholic, deprived of his drink, 
may seek more violent methods of relief in crimi- 
nal doings. Alcohol is both a compensation and 
defence and a safety valve for the blocked libido. 

TICKLISHNESS 

The sensation of ticklishness is another defence 
reaction. An interesting instance of that was 
seen in the case of a fourteen-year-old boy who 
had gone the rounds of clinics and was shown in 
the Academy of Medicine as the beginning of a 
Dementia Praecox. He had no appetite. He was 

124 



DEFENCE EEACTIONS 

said to liave various hallucinations of the sense of 
sound; he heard voices, or his mother's voice, 
calling him; he also had hallucinations of taste, 
where everything tasted salt ; and of touch, when 
every night he had the most terrible sensation of 
being tickled all over the surface of his skin. It 
began as soon as he went to bed. He could not 
sleep and lay with his knees drawn up to his chin. 
He was declared to lack emotional reaction; he 
lived in a small apartment with mother and older 
sister and brother but cared for none of them. 
Upon investigating the environment, I found the 
boy was sleeping with his mother. He was as tall 
as she, &ve feet, six inches. I ordered a couch 
prepared for him by the open windows of the 
dining-room. The mother was reluctant to try it ; 
she thought it unnecessary, but the first night the 
boy slept instantly, and always afterwards. After 
a few months of analysis the hallucinations en- 
tirely disappeared; he ate heartily and returned 
to school, when the mother concluded it was not 
necessary to have her dining-room used as a sleep- 
ing room, that what I had told her was all non- 
sense and as the boy was well he could just as 
well sleep with her again. She told him not to 
tell me about changing his room. He did not, 
but he came to me with the same pale face and 
thick, glaring-looking eyes. The day for his next 
visit his mother in great alarm came just ahead 
of him. The boy had not eaten for two days, she 

325 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOI^S CHn.D 

said he could keep nothing on his stomach. After 
severe questioning as to what had happened to 
cause a return of the illness she confessed with 
tears what she had done. As soon as he slept 
alone he was well again and his mother was con- 
vinced. 

DEFENCE AGAINST WOEK 

Not all children who set up defence reactions 
are doing so for their betterment ; they may serve 
as an excuse to avoid some unpleasant task, or as 
an excuse for laziness, or as a fear of conse- 
quences. An untruthful child may be afraid to 
tell the truth for fear of punishment. I have 
heard parents declare the trouble with their son 
was that he was afraid of no one, and had no 
respect for authority. In the latter sentence they 
hit the nail on the head. They had tried to instil 
fear into their children's hearts, mistaking fear 
for respect, and they had succeeded. The child 
had a superabundance of energy which escaped in 
mischievous pranks and which he hid by fibbing or 
any way he could. He feared them, but in teach- 
ing him fear they lost his respect. He saw their 
weakness and errors, and began to steal. They 
were wealthy and lived in a luxurious home but 
denied the boy as much spending money as he 
asked. Of course the boy was very unreasonable 
and wrong to want to begin life on the top where 
the father stopped. And through an analysis he 

126 



DEFENCE REACTIONS 

had to learn this. In this case the father was 
wise. He saw the boy improving, the face show- 
ing more character, with better application to his 
school work, so concluded it would be very desir- 
able to understand the reasons and methods of 
improvement and sought to learn them. He 
wanted himself analysed, too, thinking it rather a 
joke, as he only wanted to know what I had taught 
the boy. When told he could not understand any 
one^s life without thoroughly understanding his 
own, he was rather incredulous but said he ** would 
try it for three months. ' ' At the conclusion of the 
three months he continued until six months had 
passed, and then began collecting material for a 
book which he would entitle, * * The Explanation of 
Human Behaviour. '^ Like so many people who 
submit to a psychoanalysis, he said, *^If only I 
had known this when I was young 1 ' ' 

Psychoanalysis primarily stands for truth and 
teaches the necessity for truth, strange as it may 
seem that such teaching should come from scien- 
tific rather than religious following. To be true 
to ourselves we must know ourselves. There is 
nothing new about that idea, it was taught 
twenty-three hundred years ago by one of the 
wisest of ancient Greek philosophers. If we thor- 
oughly understood ourselves we would not blame 
our children for their actions of defence against 
us, our patience would not be tried by such seem- 
ing ingratitude, and we would know better how 

127 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

to defend ourselves against our children. The 
latter is a vital necessity of the times if we would 
live on and secure ourselves against too great 
demands of our adolescent children, or our spoiled 
and too much petted children, or our misunder- 
stood and unhappy children. As the father above 
quoted said : he knew one thing for sure, which his 
analysis had shown him, and that was, he would 
never have another strike in his factories, al- 
though once he had had riots with attempts at 
arson. But he should compel them all to go to 
school, young and old, and should provide means 
of recreation and amusement, for his employees 
were much like children who must be trained in 
the right direction until they would go naturally. 
Many children must be kept at their tasks and 
education until after their adolescence, and it 
needs a firm and constant pressure to overcome 
a child ^s unwillingness. 

Jerky discipline is an indication of nerves or 
laziness or an exhausted libido on the parent's 
part. No one has unlimited power, and when 
tired the strong character stops to rest, while the 
weak one goes on beyond his or her endurance, for 
reasons usually very selfish. It becomes a form 
of exhibitionism. Excessive giving, where one 
has not the power or means to give, is another 
defence; excessive talking is also used uncon- 
sciously to keep away unpleasant thoughts. Won- 
derful wisdom is contained in the Biblical adinoni- 

128 



I 



DEFENCE EEACTIONS 

tion to *^ judge not/' I was much surprised when 
a soldier from the battlefields of France, in an- 
swer to my efforts to brace him up from the shock 
of seeing so much suffering, wrote that the 
mental anguish a soldier suffered going into battle 
was not so great as that of a child when misunder- 
stood by his elders. The soldier is going ahead to 
fight for what he knows is right, but the child is 
held back by his helplessness in the face of what 
he thinks is wrong. 



129 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PAEENT COMPLEX 

A COMPLEX is a group of emotional ideas, or ideas 
gathered around a wish that is too painful or too 
unethical, to exist in conscious thought. It domi- 
nates its victim with a ceaseless urge, a condition 
which is popularly called ** nerves/' So intimate 
a part of an individual are his complexes, that it 
is as impossible for him to become aware of them 
without the help of the analytical psychologist as 
it is for the eye to see itself on its retina. And 
as we have recourse to an oculist to have the de- 
fective vision corrected by appropriate lenses, 
so when the family situation becomes acutely 
troublesome, the same sort of recourse may be had 
to the analytical psychologist, to correct the de- 
fects of the mental ^dsion. 

Because these ideas constituting the complex 
are unknown they have all the more power over 
the individual. The parent complex is the emo- 
tionally toned group of ideas which the child in 
his own unconscious mind has unintentionally and 
unwittingly formed about the concept of father 
and mother. So fundamental and so all-impor- 
tant is the parent complex, formed in childhood 
but persisting into adulthood, that in many cases 

130 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

the adult finds himself unable to live his own inde- 
pendent existence, and is plainly seen to be suffer- 
ing from some form of nervous disorder. Years 
of experience have shown that the chemical action 
of drugs relieves such cases only temporarily. 

In the play within the play in Hamlet, when the 
Duke Gonzago is murdered. King Claudius can 
sit no longer. His feelings overcome him and issue 
in the act of calling ** Lights, lights !'' and rushing 
from the room, thus fulfilling Hamlet's prophecy 
when he said : 

**The play's the thing 
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." 

Emotional actions are the signs of the complex 
but are not the complex. The ideas around which 
have gathered the painful emotions are lying deep 
in the unconscious. In most people they escape 
into consciousness only occasionally, showing 
themselves as a sensitiveness or being **sore on" 
some subject. If a person is ** touchy" about 
some topic, he shows that he has a complex con- 
nected with it. 



CAUSE OF PABENT COMPLEX 

The cause of the complex formed about the idea 
of the parent is that the first impressions of child- 
hood are stamped with incredible depth on a mind 
which is in some respects as soft and plastic as 

131 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

wax. But it is in other respects to be compared 
not with wax, which does not grow, but with 
human or animal tissue which does grow, magni- 
fying the original impression. I have sometimes 
wondered if these impressions did not begin at 
the hour of birth, as in the case of the child who 
refused to nurse his mother, but would nurse from 
a rubber nipple on a bottle. Was there in this case 
a too vigorous presentation of the subject at the 
first attempt to nurse 1 Again, a newly-born child 
being laid aside a long time before his first bath, 
owing to the critical condition of his mother, was 
really neglected during his first hours of life, and 
all his later life he had the feeling of being un- 
loved until his marriage, which was satisfying. 
Be that as it may, it is possible that the number 
and weight of these impressions upon a child's 
mind in a highly organized type of society are so 
great, as in a large city where there is much ex- 
citement due to the close contact with many 
people, that the natural growth of the child's own 
nature is surcharged by too frequent demands and 
impressions. There are many degrees in the force 
and liveliness with which they strike on the mind, 
varying from the soft yielding to the nearly in- 
elastic mind, which later will suffer less from his 
complexes. In these early and impressionable 
years the child has thoughts and desires which 
should be allowed to grow to the best advantage, 
cultivated, pruned and trained for better growth, 

132 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

but not with the mistaken idea that training con- 
sists in mental wrenching this way and that, of 
beating back the child's wishes without sympathy 
and by the dominating power of parent or 
teacher. 

In order to realize the true situation, we have 
thus to keep clearly in mind the impressions which 
are being made upon the child's mind and the 
growth of the mind itself, which shows that there 
is an innate force having its own tendencies in its 
own instinctive directions. If this individual urge 
in the child, which craves to grow its own way, is 
allowed to develop in a rationally normal manner 
with only enough direction to make it conform to 
social living, the impressions of childhood, 
whether they be unhappy or too exciting, will be 
outgrown. Much as it may shock those adults 
who value very greatly the memories of child- 
hood, it must be emphatically stated that the child- 
ish impressions should be obliterated so that the 
impressions of later life may take effect. This 
does not mean that no memories should survive, 
but that the importance of the early impressions 
should give way before the larger values of the 
later experiences. The persistence of the early 
experience continuing unchanged into adulthood is 
one of the greatest of misfortunes and causes the 
individual to have, when later he is in the adult 
environment, a mode of thought, a pattern of re- 
action showing childish traits which ought long 

133 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

ago to have been outgrown. The scar on a young 
sapling is covered year by year with a fresh coat- 
ing of bark and finally outwardly effaced, but if 
the development of growth were diagrammed, the 
rings of growth would look like this : 




"While a well-rounded life without the scar would 
be represented by a number of concentric perfect 
circles. We thus come to realize that there are 
two different types of people, one of which has and 
the other which has not been subjected in child- 
hood to impressions which were too strong to 
allow the natural tendencies of growth to be fol- 
lowed. 

In contrast to the individuals whose minds are 
essentially infantile are those who have developed 
a real adulthood, in character as well as physio- 
logically, and cover over or fill out the deep im- 
pressions of childhood. The impressions in child- 
hood should not be too violent, and if the tender 
growth of the child-life, representing a something 

134 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

whicli wants to grow in its own way, meets resist- 
ance and positively aggressive opposition it cannot 
expand, and the impressions remain. Althongli 
the physical body may grow, the soul of the child 
is held fast, and the retardation or complete stop- 
page of its growth forms an abnormal condition 
which from this starting-point plays a greater and 
greater role in the life of the individual. 



MOTHER LOVE 

As all life grows toward the sun, which fur- 
nishes warmth and energy, so does the child grow 
toward the person who furnishes him with warmth 
and satisfaction of his desires. The first warmth 
is given by the mother to the child in its prenatal 
existence, the instinct for nutrition is satisfied by 
her; in supplying its needs the emotional life of 
the child is called forth and in that early time 
occur the beginnings of the yearning desire we 
call love. Is it any wonder that the childhood 
which is made so attractive by the sympathy and 
devotion of the mother is very hard to leave I 
She carefully watches the material wants, her 
touch is gentle and caressing. Always she ap- 
proaches with adoring looks and encouragement, 
soothing injured feelings with sweetest tones and 
encouragement. There is established the most in- 
timate relationship between mother and child — 
why should the child wish to grow up ? How many 

135 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 

of us without knowing it carry the infantile pat- 
tern of reaction to life, and the weary ones, when 
suffering is great, cry out from the heart : 

** Backward, turn backward, Time, in thy flight, 
Make me a child again just for tonight. 
Mother, come back from the echoless shore." 

Thus these emotional feelings, which become at- 
tached to the ungratified ideas and wishes, sink to 
the unconscious and form what we call the * ^ com- 
plex'' and there the libido or energy is used to 
gratify the wishes of the complex. If too much of 
the libido is kept with these complexes in the 
inner, unknown realms of the unconscious instead 
of being worked off naturally on an external world 
of reality, there is a retardation of the healthful 
adjustment to reality, with consequent slowing up 
of energy, and with ill health, unhappiness and 
lack of ambition. Such patients think they are 
blaming every one but themselves for their fail- 
ures^ when they are really blaming every one for 
not being parents to them. The emotions which 
are appropriate to childhood are fixed or made 
permanent, and the emotions appropriate to adult- 
hood are never experienced at all, even though the 
patient may be fifty years old. 

A housewife's complex 

The complex, although crowded out of con- 
sciousness, is ever struggling for expression. It 

136 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

is shown in the jokes and attempts at humour, 
unexplained forgetting, absent-mindedness, mis- 
takes in speech and slips of the tongue, certain 
opinions, moods, dominant traits of character and 
the phantasy-thinking of day-dreams. The pa- 
tient 's conduct and feelings are all determined by 
the nature of his complexes. The night dream 
contains the picture of the complex, but as the 
educated mind of the dreamer meets the naked 
wishes of his complexes he covers them, as it were, 
with a veil of symbolism — for example: a pa- 
tient told me of the great relief she felt when she 
smashed a goblet against the bricks of her chim- 
ney — ^^^My husband makes me just wild when he 
comes to say good-bye on a Monday morning, in 
his easy-going way, and asks what I am going to 
do today when I have the entire house to restore 
from Sunday disorder; and his niece, who is visit- 
ing us and has made much of the disorder with 
her company, remarks what a lovely time she is 
having and goes off to her dressmaker, leaving 
me to do all the w^ork. I grabbed up the goblet 
and threw it with all my might against the stones 
of the fireplace and the crash gave me the great- 
est relief.^' She showed her unconscious wish to 
destroy the niece but symbolized her as the goblet. 
Our patient was held by her complexes and blamed 
her husband for not feeling the tender solici- 
tude of a father for her, instead of which she 
should have accepted her housekeeping as her 

137 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

profession and been prond to be a capable 
woman. 

The family complex is a reiterated story of our 
nursery days which would bore us to death if we 
could but see it in all its bread, butter and jam 
realism, but it is for most of us hopelessly dis- 
guised in symbolism, so that we cannot see it as 
it really is. It goes back to the days of nursing in 
babyhood and persists into adult life. There is 
constantly going on in the depths of the uncon- 
scious the fulfillment of our unsatisfied longings. 
The unlovely life in sordid surroundings, but long- 
ing for gaiety, is surrounded in the unconscious 
by music and dancing; the lonely life, in the un- 
conscious, seeks love and would be revenged on 
those who have denied it; the overburdened life 
kills and destroys those who have imposed the 
burden ; poverty is surrounded by riches. 

To the elaboration of these phantasies the 
major part of the libido is directed, and when too 
much of the emotional life is held in the family 
ties, the technical term ^ incest phantasy^' is ap- 
plied to it, with the sickening horror of life so 
well told in the Greek play of ^^CEdipus'' written 
by Sophocles, and also given expression in the 
group classifications of Totemism, which enables 
the tribes to lead an exogamous existence. From 
time immemorial the instinctive aim of life to keep 
its energy free for its own creative purposes has 
not changed, but along with it has existed also 

138 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

the desire to remain in childhood, a trend which 
we find in the very primitive tribes. To overcome 
it, the custom was practised of taking away a boy 
at the age of puberty from the mother for a cer- 
tain period. By very primitive people in the early 
cultural stages the youth was instructed in the 
rites of magic believed by his tribe to appease 
the mysterious powers of nature which control 
life and its necessities. This custom has de- 
scended to us in the form of Confirmation in the 
Church, when youth is supposed to assume re- 
sponsibility and the sponsors are no longer an- 
swerable for consequences. 

THE INCEST PHANTASY 

We must call special attention to the term ** in- 
cest phantasy '^ which is the form of phantasy- 
thinking holding so much of the libido in the uncon- 
scious situations where the individual is unable 
to sacrifice the infantile wish and where the 
further development of energy toward objects 
outside of the family is prevented. The interests, 
conversation, affections and wishes of a person 
with a strong incest phantasy remain, as it were, 
glued to the family, and as one cannot marry 
one's own family the whole aim of nature is lost 
sight of and morbid and abnormal phenomena ap- 
pear. A woman of thirty-six came for analysis, 
saying she suffered unbearably from her subcon- 

139 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

scious. It was never quite clear what she meant 
by her ^^subconscious.'' She was married and 
had several children. Her thin, nervous-looking 
face indicated a form of melancholia ; her history 
showed a father image held always in her mind as 
the ideal man. He had been kind, thoughtful, 
lovely and sympathetic, and life with him was 
always happy, yet he had committed suicide. 

Her husband, on the contrary, expected so much 
of her, she said, and never understood her 
troubles. She worked so hard on their small in- 
come and talked much of her many sacrifices. 
Her analysis, however, showed that she was un- 
willing to make the one sacrifice necessary, the 
sacrifice of her childhood wish. Her weak father 
could not face difficulties and left the world; her 
mother had to bear the burdens. The patient had 
desired a musical education, but the father had 
not sufficient funds and would not or, as she 
thought, could not work. He was so lovely, she 
said, she did not mind going without the musical 
education. 

But the question was put to the patient, **What 
would life be if every one was so lovely f The 
obvious answer was, **We would lead a vegetative 
existence, the libido would be stored in each one; 
death and annihilation would result.'' At the 
present time she has worked out her problems and 
is very appreciative of her home, children and the 
sterling character of her husband. In her uncon- 

140 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

scious she was living over her past life, taking her 
mother's place and trying to make her father 
happy so that he would not commit suicide. 

When the daughter imagines herself taking the 
mother's place, what does it really mean? In the 
unconscious thought she will be her father's wife. 
Is it any wonder that she appears pale, has 
nausea, indigestion and insomnia? And the son 
will have the same unconscious thought if the 
mother is too sweet and indulgent, and becomes 
his ideal of the dearest and loveliest woman. 
Thus we see exactly how it is that the personality 
of the parents plays a most important part among 
the influences of childhood. 

If the parents cannot give their offspring the 
proper environment necessary to start a vigorous 
life, the chances are that the child will reach years 
of maturity still wishing and seeking uncon- 
sciously the ideal parent. In every woman he 
meets, the boy will look for the qualities he thinks 
the ideal should possess. If his mother has been 
too exacting, irritable from troubles the nature of 
which the child cannot understand, neglectful of 
home and children from her own lack of mental 
growth, all the more will the boy seek the mother 
image in all women and particularly in the woman 
he marries. 

The mother image is the mother pattern; this 
is the pattern which his experience of his own 
mother leads him to form. What he finds good in 

141 



jCw 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

her he takes as part of the pattern for the mother 
he wants for his own children, and as he wants his 
own children to have all the good he may have 
missed in his own childhood, he takes the oppo- 
sites of what bad or inferior qualities he may have 
found in his mother and adds them to the already 
too exacting specifications. When he finds a girl 
who resembles his mother in any particular, his 
instinctive desire for love goes out to her and, if 
he be of a certain neurotic temperament, his in- 
stincts totally blind him to the qualities which his 
chosen one does not possess to make her the exact 
replica of his pattern, and the intellectual realiza- 
tion of these ditferences come later with a shock. 
The strong man accepts his mother as merely 
human, made of strength and weakness, and has 
consideration for her declining years ; he will have 
the courage of his convictions, the curve of his de- 
velopment will be well-rounded, no indentations 
going back to childhood ideals. 

The daughter, with her different biological aim, 
is likewise seeking her ideals. As the aim of the 
male is to go forth to find some one to cover and 
to give to, so the female shows her instinctive 
desire to be covered and to receive. Woman's suf- 
frage may be a tacit admission on the part of man- 
kind that he has not done the protecting as well 
as he should. A perfect protection would have 
left no desire among women to share in that func- 
tion, a condition which from a biological point of 

142 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

view, might be called a perversion of the natural 
aim. Just because man has failed to perform his 
duty he has called upon women to help him, he has 
taken the work from her hands ; for he makes her 
bread, her jams, jellies and preserves, he spins her 
cloth, makes her dresses, her hats, he makes her 
fashions of dress and makes her pay as exorbi- 
tantly for her tight and narrow skirts and scanty 
waists as if she wore the voluminous skirts of 
years ago. He thus to a certain degree causes the 
woman to become perverted, as biologically her 
only function is to be protected in the home and 
not go out into the world and take a part in pro- 
tecting it. 

THE FEMININE IDEAL 

When very young the baby girl shows her pref- 
erence for masculine strength. She finds great 
comfort in the support of a pair of strong arms 
which lift her up and hold her. A boy would 
wriggle and squirm to get away. All her life she 
looks for strength in her ideal man, physical 
strength, strength of purpose, intellectual 
strength, according to whatever have been the 
early influences that have moulded her character. 
In trying to dissolve a strong father complex in 
a young woman unhappily married, I found the 
father image had loomed large before the girl 
when she became engaged. She confessed that 
her husband was a great disappointment. He was 

143 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE KEEVOUS CHILD 

so different from her father who was so comfort- 
able to have around; but her husband kept the 
house in disorder, threw newspapers everywhere, 
cigar ashes in everything. Upstairs their room 
was topsy-turvy if he was in it for a few minutes ; 
he was so rough in his salutations when he came 
home, picked her up and kissed her three or four 
times, which was most trying when she was en- 
deavouring to look her best for the dinner table. 
Father was so different, he was so neat and quiet, 
his chiffonier was in order and Jack^s was tossed 
about. After dinner father sat down by the fire, 
with his cigar and newspaper, an essential factor 
of the home circle. She understood later that the 
enthusiasm of youth demanded action, and that 
when her father was young he was not the sedate 
man she knew. She was trying to be a wife after 
the model of her aged mother. 

A woman of thirty-eight went quite to pieces 
after her husband's death when she had to attend 
stockholders' meetings, consult lawyers about the 
details of property management, and keep bank 
accounts. She found mankind unresponsive and 
could not understand why she was expected to 
protect her own business interests. Large bills 
were sent to her for services rendered. Again, 
the father complex prevented the self-reliance she 
might have felt, and she approached every man 
as though he were her father and personally in- 
terested in her. 

144 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

Another case is that of a woman over forty 
years of age whose father had died when she was 
a child. She always longed for masculine strength 
to lean on. When four years old she had been ill, 
her father had carried her in his arms, an indul- 
gence which had greatly relieved her tired little 
body weakened by fever. Ever afterward she 
longed, when tired, for strong arms to support 
her; the touch of a coat sleeve against her face 
satisfied a deep yearning in her soul. When she 
married she told her husband how much she had 
longed for and missed her father, and the hus- 
band, who was ten years older, promised to be 
both father and husband to her. This promise 
comforted her greatly, and the ever-ready coat 
sleeve, with strong arms to support seemed to be 
the end of her longings. However, the coat sleeve 
and the masculine strength were the beginning of 
troubles. She was constantly ill, refused to sleep 
in the same room with her husband, declared con- 
jugal intimacy was the curse of married life. Yet 
no glimmering of the truth came to either of them, 
that when the husband promised to be both hus- 
band and father, he was causing his wife to put 
^two persons in one, so that she married her own 
father, in exactly the way that many girls would 
like to do. In her dreams she saw her father 
wearing her husband ^s clothes, sitting on her 
front door steps, always waiting for her, until she 
finally realized how impossible to have both a 

145 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

father and a husband in one, and that she no 
longer needed a father. 

Who has not seen the joy of the daughter in 
taking charge of the home when mother is away? 
She sits at the head of the table, orders or pre- 
pares father's favourite dishes, puts on the most 
becoming gown, and feels very grown up in enter- 
taining his friends. The son also has his diffi- 
culties with a mother complex when he expects 
his wife to be as careful and considerate of him 
as his mother was, and he feels that he is not 
understood or appreciated when he finds his wife 
is expecting the same understanding from him. 
When the parent dies before the birth of a child, 
or in the case of an adopted child, it is more diffi- 
cult for the child to separate the actual parent 
from the wife or husband, for the child who has 
never known a parent's love longs for it intensely, 
even after years of maturity, and feels starved 
for affection. An ideal of the perfect parent is 
held and the realization of it constantly sought 
until some soul-satisfying situation is met. 



OTHER COMPLEXES 

While each life must struggle with its com- 
plexes, and no one escapes them, it is only when 
the conscious life is strong and full of interests 
that we do not suffer from the effects upon our 
energy. As we have said, these complexes are 

146 



i 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

not confined to the family group but extend in 
various directions, seizing upon unsatisfied de- 
sires that are unknown to the person. Our pa- 
tience is tried by the individual unable to adjust 
his complexes. His aims are apparently selfish, 
he is sensitive and peevish, takes offence on the 
slightest provocation, is oftentimes a woman- 
hater and runs away from feminine approach ex- 
cept the beloved mother and sister, and vice versa, 
is easily annoyed by children except those with the 
same family ties. A person closely bound by his 
complexes is dubbed a ^^ crank '' and woe to the 
family or social organization of which he is a 
member. He will narrow life to a ^*dog in the 
manger'' principle, he cannot fill his surround- 
ings himself, but no one is allowed near enough 
to disturb or interfere with his wishes. In those 
poor infantile souls generosity exists only in 
spots. They lead what we call a *^ narcissistic" 
existence. Such a person is too much in love with 
himself to appreciate another person's view- 
point ; the manifestations of their unconscious are 
most unlovely, being spells of temper, depressions, 
or ** nerves" in some form. Rarely do they give 
where they cannot share the benefits, as a matter 
of fact they can only give to the mother or mother- 
substitute, because from her they reap such large 
returns. Verily, in these days, with millions of 
orphaned and homeless children, we need to turn 
to our Bibles for counsel and guidance to help free 

147 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

ourselves from our complexes, if we are too 
prejudiced to seek more modern methods, and 
open our hearts and homes to the children, **for 
of such is the kingdom.'' I have been surprised 
to see people I had hitherto respected, turn away 
from the nervous child with condemnation, no 
charity, faith or hope, no idea of rejoicing in the 
betterment of the child or of helping with intelli- 
gence, but exhibiting the most deplorable igno- 
rance in considering the nervous child as a men- 
ace to peace, and great selfishness in refusing the 
slightest sacrifice to help restore the tired child 
to robust health. 

The complex existing in the unconscious 
thought of the individual is symbolically pictured 
or concretely expressed in the dream as chains 
of steel that bind him. ^^I saw a man in a cofi&n 
and the coffin was wrapped with chains of steel, 
the man was barely alive. He writhed and 
twisted, but could not force his way out as the 
chains held him." The associations of sickness, 
death, his mother in a coffin, and of a person being 
linked with another as with chains, a word which 
has been used to describe marriage, showed the 
analysis to be that the patient was the man in the 
coffin (which symbolized the mother) and that he 
was bound to her memory as with links of steel, a 
power he could not break but which could be re- 
moved by another person if the patient had the 
self-control to wait and not exhaust himself in 

148 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

constantly showing his complexes (writhing and 
twisting). The unconscious mother-hold is seen 
in many instances of the old life (the parent) 
clinging to, feeding on and drawing inspiration 
from the young life (the child) held by ties of 
family. 

MOTHERS WOOING SONS 

Last night in our hotel we watched the dancing 
couples, among them a young soldier and a pe- 
culiar looking woman. Her hair was auburn, 
much curled and fluffed around her face. A nar- 
row strip of black velvet high up around her neck, 
passed directly under her chin. Rich jewels on 
hands and dress, and a costume modish and in 
perfect form, bespoke wealth and refined home 
surroundings. Her slender figure was graceful, 
but her face looked queer and purplish. As she 
danced a pleased expression came. Was she some 
genius, we wondered, whose curve of develop- 
ment had been so uneven that she showed these 
results'? Just then an old lady took the vacant 
chair beside me. She was white-haired and 
motherly. *^I see you are watching them,'' she 
said. * * That is my daughter and her son. They 
do have such good times together. But he has 
been sick and still has no appetite. There, they 
have stopped dancing, I must go and see that he 
sits down to rest. ' ' And she left us. The mystery 
was explained. It was only an old woman trying 

149 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

to look young and remain young to hold her son's 
love and attention, which should have been given 
to a young girl. The black velvet around her 
throat, high up under her chin, marked the effort 
to hide the soft wrinkle which if filled out makes 
the double chin. But the son, tall and good-look- 
ing as he stood among other soldiers in the ball- 
room, noticeably lacked their enthusiasm ; his face 
was dull, hopeless and weak. The army has been 
sought by many a man otherwise unable to free 
himself from the family grasp and don'ts. The 
mother also has an unconscious to reckon with. 
If she only knew it, what suffering she would be 
saved! If she would only step aside and let the 
child go on to his goal she would see him turning 
back to her, and she would rejoice in his glorious 
strength of manhood. She would then be well re- 
warded with the results of education begun under 
her instruction, and he would complete the jour- 
ney from adolescence to maturity. 

Another case of the disastrous result of a 
strong mother complex was found in the case of a 
twenty-two year old boy who, in an unusual fear 
of the number thirteen, symbolized the wish to 
return to the mother. Such a horror he had of 
the number that when a post-office money order 
was sent him by his family on the Pacific Coast, 
although he had reached his last cent, when he saw 
the sub-station where his money was was marked 
No. 13, he turned away. He knew no one to whom 

150 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

to apply for help; I happened to be out of town 
for two days, and as his pocket was empty he was 
entirely destitute and without food for two days, 
sleeping on park benches, seeking shelter in a 
tunnelled walk when it rained. 

His analysis showed many curious phases of 
childhood, especially the mistake parents make in 
allowing children in the rooms of father and 
mother. He was an only child, and was always 
brought into his mother's room mornings before 
she was up. When about two and a half years old 
he went into his mother's room one morning and 
played around the bed and under the blankets, 
hopping around as his little fox-terrier dog did. 
His mother was disturbed and commanded him- 
to be quiet, no further impression remained with 
her but the young man never forgot it. Whether 
he imagined it or experienced it, he declared he 
never forgot the comfortable feeling of being so 
near to her. The father, who was present at the 
time, quickly put the boy out as being too noisy 
and persistent in playing around the mother. An 
intense dislike, which later became distrust, for 
the father began. The boy brooded constantly, 
screamed and refused to be away from his mother. 

When he began going to school he was better 
until the adolescent period began, when study and 
school became impossible. He was silent and told 
no one his thoughts. Doctors were sought, they 
removed adenoids and tonsils, had his teeth cared 

151 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

for, fitted glasses to his eyes, not knowing what 
was the cause of the boy's trouble. As his mother 
wrote me, in giving the history: '^I left my hus- 
band, closed the house, took J. away to the sea- 
shore and devoted myself to him." It was the 
worst thing she could have done ; he was pale, had 
no appetite, slept badly; nothing improved him. 
He began to call his father shocking names, re- 
fused to talk, stood on a street for hours looking 
the picture of misery. When spoken to he made 
obscene answers. The only person he was at all 
happy with was his grandfather. 

One Sunday afternoon when walking with his 
grandfather and another old man, he heard a ref- 
erence to the figure thirteen as being unlucky, and 
then began his horror of that number. He was 
taken the rounds of nerve specialists, but with 
no improvement, and finally sought a psycho- 
analysis with a physician on the Pacific coast and 
for the first time improved. He began school 
again and continued through high school and two 
years in college, then came another nervous break- 
down. The boy himself by that time recognized 
the need for further analysis, and felt an impera- 
tive urge to go to the East. He was sent to me. 
He was a sad looking specimen of humanity, 
ragged, unwashed, uncombed. Safety pins were 
used instead of cuff buttons. His shoes looked 
water-soaked and were cut at the top in two slits 
in a peculiar manner. Though he looked to be a 

152 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

hopeless case, there were two redeeming features : 
his clean-shaven face with his gold-rimmed spec- 
tacles, and fine brown hair, falling in a soft wave 
over his forehead in the maner an artist affects, 
gave an air of hidden refinement. He was tall 
and erect, his troubles had not bowed him down 
as is usually the case with neurotics. I saw then 
why he had been sent for an analysis. There was 
resolution in those square shoulders, and an in- 
tellect back of the face which scowled at me when 
I asked his name. Later in the hour there came a 
smile which was encouraging. 

It was slow work to reconstruct a life which had 
regressed so far to infantilism that he would not 
even wash and dress himself. In the unconscious 
he was plainly looking for a mother, as his own 
mother had not been satisfactory. In the con- 
scious life he was very ill, unable to think, to work 
or care for himself, or even to get a room to sleep 
in. He spent the first week in barrooms day and 
night, sometimes drinking, as alcohol was a relief 
to his pent-up emotions. As his analysis pro; 
ceeded he brought in dreams of being caught in 
nets, entangled in meshes, like a spider's web 
when the fly is invited and tempted by promise of 
the beauty which means death. The analysis of 
the symbolism of the fly caught in the spider's 
web was well shown when the mother wrote that 
when she saw J.'s nervous condition she gave up 
everything and devoted herself to him. He cer- 

153 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHn.D 

tainly was entangled. As lie improved, Ms first 
work was running an elevator for a few hours a 
day. Then he would leave suddenly and it re- 
quired more analysis to enable him to get a new 
start. Each new start lasted longer until he was 
working steadily, the desire for companionship 
came and alcoholism stopped. 

Another case of a twenty-three year old girl 
with hysteria was sent to me for analysis. She 
had long crying spells, complained of her heart 
beating so hard, she was sure she had ** heart 
disease,'' as she called it, although four doctors 
had told her she had not. She was educated for 
a school teacher but did not want to teach. She 
was an only child, living alone with her mother, 
her father having died a few months before the 
patient's trouble began. We do not take a pa- 
tient's history when beginning an analysis, ex- 
cept when given by the parents, as we are con- 
cerned only with the part of it impressed on the 
patient 's mind which contains the environment af- 
fecting the patient's difficulties, and that is 
shown in the unconscious thought which comes to 
light during an analysis. This girl gave her first 
dream phantasies as follows: "'/ was starting on 
a journey, and went past the place when I ought to 
have changed cars. Some one was following me 
everywhere I went, a man and a woman. I was 
not afraid of them, hut they seemed to he hiding 
every time I looked at them and I could not thi/nk 

154 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

why I could not get rid of them, so I hid too, and 
then they went past me and it was our minister 
and his ivife. I could not see his face, hut I knew 
it was he/^ 

Without giving all the long list of associations, 
I may say that the analysis showed the minister 
and his wife to be the father and mother whose 
influence she could not get rid of, or in other 
words, her own childish wishes she could not set 
aside, and did not recognize until she hid (was 
sick) and then she knew that her childhood had 
lasted beyond the adolescent age (she went past 
the station when she ought to have changed cars). 
When she fancied she had heart trouble she went 
home and went to bed for a month and then she 
felt better. She ended the conflict of her desires 
by giving up to them in staying in bed. 

The next dream showed more directly the cause 
of her fancied heart trouble. She dreamed that 
she had killed some one. She saw the person all 
covered up in bed and could not see the face but 
knew she was the murderer and would have 
to pay for it. She had the impression that the 
murdered person was a man. We know the 
unconscious thought of the child is to kill any 
one in his way. When asked what man had 
interfered with her wishes she answered she 
had had nothing to do with any man but her 
father ; then she recalled a man teacher in college 
who was very strict and whom she disliked in- 

155 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

tensely. As the dream contains only our unrecog- 
nized problems and wishes, it was evident the 
teacher could not be the man of her dream, but he 
symbolized another person, or quality, possessed 
by some one who interfered with her wishes. The 
distinctive quality of a teacher is superior knowl- 
edge and authority. Who had been the person in 
her life with superior knowledge and authority 
who interfered with her wishes? I suspected the 
father but wanted her to think it out. She began 
to boast that no one could make her do what she 
did not want to do ; her mother had learned better 
than to ask for obedience. *'How about your 
father!" I asked. She became quiet and thought- 
ful. ^ 'He tried to make me mind, but I was pretty 
bad. Guess I worried him to death sometimes. ' ' 

That was the moment to free the unconscious 
thought that she had killed her father, of which 
she had been dreaming. ^'What did your father 
die of r' 

She answered quickly, '* Heart disease," and 
jflashed a quick look of intelligence at me. 

'*So you feel that you killed your father by 
your wilfulness and wish to atone for it by suffer- 
ing from the same disease of the heart?" 

She had had no love affairs. No emotional out- 
let was afforded her excepting the emotion of 
hatred toward authority. It is impossible to 
overestimate the importance of the fact that the 
images in the dream represent the dreamer in dif- 

156 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

ferent phases of her own character. For instance, 
the girl dreams that her father is lying dead be- 
fore her. She has killed him. But in her dream 
he represents herself, and she feels she ought to 
kill herself as a retribution for having killed him 
in waking life, not really, but metaphorically, by 
making him so unhappy that she broke his heart. 
In the dream she knew she would have to pay for 
it, the destructive hatred would destroy her, but 
thus would she atone for her father ^s death and 
be true to him. What a strong father complex held 
that girl ! In her we have an example of the split- 
ting of the libido ^ and perhaps the beginnings of 
a Dementia Praecox. Her analysis was not con- 
tinued. She tried several other physicians for a 
diagnosis of heart trouble and then returned to 
the town of her birth. 

The cause of unhappiness in married life seems 
possibly a topic far removed from the character 
formation of the child, who is commonly believed 
to know nothing about it. In a book devoted to 
the nervous child, why say so much about marital 
unhappiness? Because both the happiness of the 
parents and of the child a quarter of a century 
later are dependent upon the same thing. The 
usual relation between the healthy mother and 
child is so idyllic, and the later picture of unhappy 
married life with ill health and misery is so hell- 
ish, that many have wondered where began the 

1 See page 82. 

157 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

little rift within the lute after the ecstasy of the 
wedding day that could cause so great discord, 
like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh. 
But never before the present age has the cause 
been searched for on scientific grounds. People 
have been called foolish as though they were wil- 
fully being unhappy. A great many opinions and 
beliefs are given that have never been adequately 
tested. We have jumped to conclusions, we have 
been impatient for results. 



THINKING vs. IMAGINING 

We do not use our thoughts and imaginations 
properly. The words ** thinking" and ** imagin- 
ing'' are generally used very loosely and often 
lead to confusion. Thinking is opposed to imag- 
inative construction, thinking means judging and 
reasoning and asking, and supposing according to 
conception, and forming and testing of hypothe- 
ses. Imagining means the combination of images 
in new forms. Whoever has tried to make peace 
between unhappily married people will readily see 
what a failure in thinking the two ill-mated people 
are guilty of, and what extravagances in imagin- 
ing. Each one expects the other to do the think- 
ing, and then violently contradicts and resists it 
in trying to represent themselves each to the other 
as being the injured party. How many men com- 
ing home from their club or other evening's recre- 

158 



THE PARENT COMPLEX 

ation could feelingly re-echo Burns' lines from 
Tarn O'Shanter: 

** Where sits our sulky, sullen dame 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.'' 
and do not understand the suffering in the heart- 
ache of the *^dame" who is looking for fatherly 
attributes in her husband, while he is expecting 
the mother indulgence from her. He rather has 
the right on his side, and while he seeks recreation 
she should also re-create herself. How? Well, as 
she must eat and sleep for her own re-creation, so 
should she have her own interests for her own 
mental and psychic development. 

When the daughter marries (and this applies 
equally to the son), in order to begin life as is gen- 
erally thought, it is usually to continue life with 
the ideal mate who, in the unconscious, is a com- 
bination of father and husband. There is no moral 
reasoning about marriage and its expectations, 
but only an inexperienced imagination in mental 
pictures from past wishes. When reality is found 
to be different from those pictures of imagination, 
the reality is not seen but only the vacancy where 
the realization of infantile wishes was expected 
to be found. The companionship in the new per- 
sonality of the husband is perplexing to the 
*' child- wife " no matter what her age may be. 
Dickens shows her in the character of Dora in 
David Copperfield, 

159 



CHAPTER VIII 

BURIED EMOTIONS 

To the uninitiated parent it often seems that the 
child is acting from ^^pnre cussedness'' if he 
neglects his work or seeks to escape from au- 
thority. The destructive emotions of fear and 
anger, about whose specific effects upon the body 
we are now learning from medical researches,^ 
do not in the child mean the same as they do in the 
adult. The **pure cussedness'' of the child may 
be quite a different affair from that of the adult. 
The child, in his actions which seem to show these 
emotions, is expressing his desire to grow both 
physically and mentally, while the adult fre- 
quently in the same emotions is manifesting his 
unconscious desire not to grow. The child knows 
that if he steals a cake from the pantry he is 
breaking mother's rules of conduct, which are 
made not to prevent him from growing, but for 
another purpose. He has enjoyed the cake, and 
has done nothing retrogressive except to displease 
mother, who in many instances would be more 
pleased than displeased if she but comprehended, 
because in getting sweets from mother he is pay- 
ing her the highest compliment he can. 

1 Cannon : Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage. 

160 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

The perversity of the adult, however, is quite a 
different matter. In breaking laws which he is 
himself supposed to have had a share in making, 
he is going contrary to the rational side of his 
nature which inevitably must have had more de- 
velopment than the child's. The act of the crimi- 
nal is a breaking out of emotions that have been 
unfortunately buried in his unconscious. The ob- 
structions to the growth and proper freeing of 
the libido are seen in many forms of nervous dis- 
orders. The lack of ability on the part of such 
patients to drive their own libido, resulting in 
their being themselves run away with, is seen in 
the haunting fear characteristic of the anxiety 
neurosis. A fear of being a coward, in a patient 
who is really a strong, self-reliant character; a 
fear of losing hair when the patient has a thick 
growth of hair on a healthy scalp ; a fear of drop- 
ping dead when he is a remarkably healthy per- 
son, all indicate a repression of the libido. The 
buried emotions have caused a fear in such a per- 
son's soul that he is inadequate normally to 
supply the demands of the most vital nature. The 
emotions being buried in the unconscious are un- 
able to follow the path of the libido as it seeks to 
turn from its source to fulfil its function in the 
world. It perforce turns back to where the light 
and fire burn for it. 

Thus begin the nervous and mental disorders 
which develop in later life as the demands and dif- 

161 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

Acuities increase. In order better to understand 
the subject it will be necessary to look from the 
modern analytic viewpoint to the exact nature of 
the emotions. As the etymology of the word 
e-motion shows, the emotions are a moving out- 
ward. Nature intended the libido eventually to 
gain its satisfaction by an outward going activity 
from the individual, which would produce a result 
of some change in the external world of real 
things, and only incidentally and indirectly a re- 
ciprocal or retroactive change in the organism it- 
self. In recalling one's acquaintances one can 
almost always say quite definitely whether any 
given person belongs in that class of people who 
get their satisfactions from external acts or in- 
ternal activities or thoughts. William James has 
divided people into two classes, tough-minded and 
tender-minded. Tender-minded people get their 
satisfaction from internal effects. Similarly, na- 
ture has designed us to be primarily tough-minded 
for she has made it impossible for an individual 
physically to reproduce himself except through 
an external act. Only when we get an adequate 
emotional outlet do we feel the satisfaction of ac- 
complishment. When we say that every life must 
have an emotional outlet we literally mean that we 
must move out of ourselves, we must (as we have 
to liberate our libido) acquire a means of giving 
outward manifestations to certain states of mind 
such as tenderness, affection, love, friendship, 

162 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

sympathy, or any of the fine spiritual qualities 
which are conducive to the reproducing and sav- 
ing of life, in short, the creative emotions. 



REPKODUCTION 

In the lower forms of animal life the reproduc- 
tive process practically constitutes life's entire 
function. In any form of animal life the power- 
ful law of attraction calls together the individuals 
of opposite sex. At such times, so strong is the 
mating instinct, it is as if one cell out of all the 
huge mass of protoplasm in the male exercised 
sole control over its entire movements, which are 
directed solely by that one cell, for the purpose of 
finding and uniting with just one cell in the mass 
of protoplasm in the female.^ The result of this 
union is a unicellular organism, in which the two 
substances combine intimately and produce a new 
cell having a more powerful energy of growth 
than any other cell in the body of either male or 
female. In some forms of reproduction which are 
known as budding the new individual or bud lives 
only at the expense of the old trunk, which gives 
life to the new branches. But in animal reproduc- 
tion the result of the union of the male and female 
cells is a completely independent individual, un- 
like the bud which is dependent on the branch 
from which it grows. 

1 See Ribot : Psychology of the Emotions. 

163 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

In the higher multicellular animals the individ- 
uals possess a mobility secured through a nervous 
system which becomes the mental director of the 
living organism, and invests it with its indi- 
vidual character. This extraordinary complexity 
of organization is what allows the higher forms of 
animal life, bees and other social insects and ani- 
mals, and, above all, humans, to form numerous 
social relations with other individuals — relation- 
ships which are impossible in lower orders of ani- 
mal life. This higher type of complicated organ- 
ism is entirely dependent, for the preservation of 
the species, upon the proper functioning of the 
reproductive element, for the species would disap- 
pear if the male cells could not find and reach the 
female cells through the active movement of the 
individual as a whole. 

SPRINGTIME OF LOVE 

Thus nature produces the marvellous phe- 
nomenon, that of the desire to escape from all 
authority and to go forth to find the mate, pene- 
trating the entire nervous system of adolescent 
youth. Body and soul being transfused by this 
instinct makes, for a time at least, every action of 
the individual a delight and an ecstasy. Every 
activity being, at these times, in perfect align- 
ment, directed toward the same goal, ^he individ- 
uaPs complete unity with the mate uplifts him to 

164 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

the highest ideals. , This ardent desire and power- 
ful impulse becomes the strongest motive, it is 
the strongest instinct in every member of the 
species. It arises to an overwhelming intensity 
in every part of the nervous system as the age 
of puberty is completed, and attracts the individ- 
ual irresistibly to the opposite sex. The interest 
and pleasure of self-preservation which has oc- 
cupied the child's attention is effaced by this new 
instinct. The desire to find a mate dominates 
every phase of individual life. It fills our fiction 
and our drama, telling over and over again the 
old, old story that [the course of true love never 
does run smooth, land relating the adventures and 
misunderstandings of hero and heroine until they 
marry and liye happily ever afterwards. It is 
given expression in the lines of our poets. As we 
look at nature we see everywhere the same desire 
of one sex to attract another, in the song of the 
bird, the hum of the insect and the blossom of the 
plant. The young man and woman are domi- 
nated by a major influence and see the world in a 
celestial haze of colours which veil all the defects 
and miseries of reality. Each swears impossible 
things and believes in immortal happiness. A 
reciprocal illusion transforms all life into a mi- 
rage of bliss. Some, however, do not gain the 
perfection of this bliss, even at the first awaken- 
ing of these instincts, and in a few others there is 
no bliss at all. The men and women we meet 

165 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

range all the way from zero to perfection in the 
way their emotions respond to the environment 
when it contains the elements of a possible love- 
life. What the unmarried, both bachelors and 
maids, and the mismated married persons all lack 
is the proper and adequate expressions of their 
emotions buried under a blocked libido. 



DESEXUALIZATION 

We can readily see the importance of the nor- 
mal and timely development of the reproductive 
power of life by contrasting it with the effects of 
castration or ovariotomy, which profoundly af- 
fect the energies, both physical and mental, of 
both sexes. Men become thin, their voices high- 
pitched and their chests narrow. They become 
beardless, or nearly so, and lose the spirit of con- 
quest which characterizes true manliness. 
Women become fat, and sometimes take on mas- 
culine traits. When we see that loss of sex power, 
whether from castration, impotence or sterility in 
the male, ovariotomy and barrenness in the fe- 
male leads to neurosis and degeneration, it is 
remarkable that we have not given deeper con- 
sideration to this vital subject. During the 
adolescent period children, as a rule, get very 
little assistance from their parents who are unable 
to help children in their love-life. Influen^ced by 
their own unhappy experiences, they either err in 

166 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

representing to the child a condition which is 
undesirable or in giving the child an inaccurate 
even if not unpleasant impression of the sub- 
ject. 

A child should never be frightened or shamed 
about sex. Many parents do both without know- 
ing it. It is not possible for parents to give sex 
instruction to a child if the parent is not abso- 
lutely pure-minded about it, for the knowledge 
should be presented as an impersonal and scien- 
tific matter of fact. Otherwise, a child's questions 
had better be answered in the business-like man- 
ner of a specialist. It is a subject which must be 
faced as soon as questions are asked, and truth 
must be told in a general way. Without such in- 
formation given a child when it asks, all sorts of 
weird phantasies about sex may be passing 
through the child's mind, which manifest them- 
selves in many unusual acts, called abnormal. We 
are so careful about feeding our children's bodies, 
but how rarely do we feed their minds as success- 
fully. Sex education cannot be shirked without the 
risk of doing the greatest harm to a child in future 
years, and equal harm may be done by filling a 
child's mind with fear and horror of the whole 
subject as the surest way of keeping the adoles- 
cent from yielding to temptations. 

By rough handling children can be taught to 
fear anything; there is nothing but detriment in 
fear, yet we consciously continue to teach an4 

J67 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

govern our children by fear long after their in- 
tellect has grown. Fear of evil, however, is no 
proper motive for refraining from evil. The weak 
handling of the sex education, the awful silence 
and mystery of the birth of a child, frightens with 
breathless awe a growing girl. And from my 
results in analysis of pregnant women, I believe 
much of the obstetrical complications and pro- 
tracted hours of labour can be traced to the 
*' conspiracy of silence '' surrounding the young 
girl. 



AUTO-EEOTISM 

It is most important that parents should care- 
fully consider the effects, too, caused in their chil- 
dren's minds, not by fear of any external activity, 
but by pleasure derived from an internal one. 
For, if through any cause, a child forms a habit, 
which all children are prone to do, of securing 
pleasure largely through internal activities (i.e. 
thoughts) or from activities carried out upon his 
own body, as all such activities must be if they are 
not directed to the accomplishment of a concrete 
result in the world of external reality, he will have 
begun a habit which tends to shut him off from 
the proper kind of intercourse with his fellows. 
Should this isolating habit gain complete mastery 
over his character he might as well be sent to a 
sanitarium for good. How some children injure 

168 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

tliemselves in producing in themselves a relaxa- 
tion of the libido in unnatural ways is clearly illus- 
trated by the following case of a thirteen-year-old 
girl. She shows also the results of too early forc- 
ing of growth. 

She was sent to me for analysis for petit mat 
(spells resembling epilepsy). Her parents were 
theatrical people in vaudeville. At three years 
of age this child was taught songs and put on the 
stage and earned for her parents $35.00 a week. 
Her first attack was at ^ve years of age. The 
doctor told them it resulted from indigestion. 
Another attack came in a few months and the 
spells continued but did not interrupt her stage 
work. At eight years she was earning $85.00 a 
week. The parents could show her only in the 
states where the child labour law did not inter- 
fere, and so they travelled from place to place. 
The spells came at shorter intervals, from once 
or twice a month to two or three a day. Their 
character changed when she was about nine years 
old, and became shorter. When she came to me 
her face was pale and dull in expression. Her 
eyes were dark and brilliant, they searched every 
one to *^see if they are my friends.'* Friends to 
her meant people she could be familiar with, 
climbing on their laps, putting her arms around 
their necks, or leaning her head on their shoulders. 
In her vaudeville life she had seen many familiari- 
ties which she tried to emulate with her friends, 

169 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

but if not allowed to do so she used herself as a 
substitute. She called it 'Moving herself." 

The spells of petit mal usually came when she 
was in the bathroom, or alone at night after she 
had gone to bed. The parents thought the girl 
was frightened, as the peculiar cry which epi- 
leptics give preceded an attack. A lowered men- 
tality and lack of physical growth had alarmed 
them, they had kept her from school although she 
begged to go, but from pride the parents kept her 
hidden. They did not want to be disgraced by such 
a child, they said, and school to the child meant 
only a place to play with other children. The 
analysis revealed the premature passion which 
had blazed up and died down with the girl's 'Mov- 
ing herself so frequently. The horrified parents 
gave their fullest co-operation in helping to bring 
up the life which had sunk so far down. Grad- 
ually her face gained in expression, colour re- 
turned, the eyes lost their hard, glaring look. It 
was three years before she had clean, healthy lan- 
guage and conduct, and even then she had not the 
normal child's reactions, so slowly did that par- 
ticular young life recuperate. 

The foregoing case shows the results of too 
great acceleration in the development of the emo- 
tions. The next case is one of retardation and 
stunting due to one of the causes I have mentioned 
already in this chapter, namely, the scaring or 
shaming of the child in matters of sex. 

170 



BURIED EMOTIONS 



AN INCOEKIGIBLE GIEL 



A mother brought her sixteen-year-old daugh- 
ter for analysis, saying that since her eleventh 
year the girl had been growing more and more 
incorrigible. She would not stay in school, had 
no idea of time, was late for meals and other ap- 
pointments, was slovenly in appearance, with 
holes in the heels of her stockings showing above 
her shoetops. The mother had thought that if 
only the girl could be made to stay in a good 
boarding-school, the other faults would be reme- 
died, but whether far or near the girl would 
always run away and go home. Once she was put 
in a school over ^ve hundred miles away. The 
mother hoped, as it was so distant, that the girl 
would be too timid to travel so far among 
strangers. Distance, however, had no effect, as 
she left school one night after dinner, walked all 
night and for thirty hours until exhausted and 
then asked aid to reach home. 

Although she was physically large and well-de- 
veloped, she apparently cared nothing for boys' 
or girls ' society. She denied all knowledge of the 
reproductive process, although in this matter she 
had been instructed most carefully by her mother, 
though, as will be shown, the mother took care to 
make her afraid of sex. She never wanted to get 
up mornings and liked to spend the entire day in 
her room, with the door locked, playing with her 

171 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

belongings. Her maid described ber as ^^just 
fiddling and fussing, poking in ber bureau draw- 
ers, or sitting on tbe floor as a cbild witb toys." 
Her unconscious was found to be filled witb sexual 
pbantasies. ^'A tramp was cbasing ber tbrough 
a cornfield. Sbe was so f rigbtened and if be bad 
caugbt ber sbe would bave surely died.'' Again 
**tbere was a caterpillar as long as tbe stairs. 
Some one said it was a caterpillar but it didn't 
look like one. ' ' Sbe refused to describe it, otber- 
wise tban tbat it was tbe most terrible looking 
tbing sbe ever saw. Always in tbe unconscious 
sbe was being pursued by some frigbtful form of 
life, wbicb sbe symbolized as tramps, caterpillars 
or fisb tbat jumped at ber. In otber words, sbe 
was afraid to meet life. Life was frigbtful to ber, 
baving been presented to ber in some ugly form. 
Tbe mystery associated witb it alarmed ber. Sbe 
refused to stand alone, and to assume any respon- 
sibility, but sbut berself away from people in 
order to continue ber cbildbood unmolested. Sbe 
bad no example to imitate in growing up. Her 
parents bad separated in ber eleventb year. Tbe 
f atber bad a violent temper wbicb be freely vented 
upon bis wife in tbe girl's presence. Tbe motber 
bad large social demands, kept late bours, bad 
mucb friction witb servants and witb tbe quarrel- 
, ling busband. We plainly see bow tbe girl became 
tbe innocent victim of ber unfortunate environ- 
ment and, wben tbe strong demands of nature 

172 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

were felt in her adolescent years, she did not know 
how to meet them, as mutual love and respect 
were unknown to her. She, therefore, shunned all 
knowledge and tried to remain in childhood. 

wanted: a despotic husband 

The splitting of the libido in childhood, referred 
to in Chapter IV, page 82, is well illustrated in 
the case of a married woman, Mrs. S., who was 
sent to me for analysis to relieve the troubles of 
her very unhappy married life. She was a 
** border line'' case, diagnosed as Dementia 
Praecox. She had not married the man she most 
loved, and had girlhood problems which had 
greatly disturbed her happiness ; but the present 
trouble had been in no way attributed to the 
events of those years. The analysis showed the 
mental trouble to have become manifest about the 
twelfth year. Mrs. S. had a brother she was fond 
of and a younger sister who was so entirely dif- 
ferent that they never had any patience with each 
other's idiosyncrasies. The disturbing member 
of the home in her young life had been her father. 
They never could please him. He was so irritable 
and so easily annoyed that she always wondered 
what she had done and always tried hard to please 
him for a word of appreciation, but never suc- 
ceeded. 

When she was twelve years old, her father and 
173 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

mother put her in a boarding-school and went to 
Europe. She was bitterly disappointed, ^'Why 
didn't they take me with them? They must have 
brought me here just to get rid of me" was her 
haunting thought. She was dull and listless, made 
up her mind she would not study or learn any- 
thing, and drummed on the piano instead of prac- 
tising, as she expressed it in her analysis. 

At one visit she produced the following dream : 
*^0n a train with a neighbour I know very slightly, 
cmd my mother. The neighbour buttons my 
mother's shoes. I am with another acquaintance 
who has six lovely children. I help a man to hatch 
chickens. We put eggs in hot water on a stove vn 
a garage or outbuilding. Put the chickens in a 
pan of sawdust." 

In the analysis it came out that she feels she is 
not fit to button the shoes of a real mother as 
she has never herself been a real mother. Al- 
though she has three children, she feels she has 
failed in her motherly duties. But with her neigh- 
bour 's husband she would have been a better 
mother for her children. She herself has had 
lovely children, but has tried to feed them on saw- 
dust. She had surrounded herself with sawdust. 
Nothing will grow in sawdust. She had not 
grown. 

The haunting thought stayed with her after the 
parents returned, when she began to evince an 
extreme negativistic attitude toward everything, 

174 



BtFRIED EMOTIONS 

refusing to do anything her parents asked of her. 
There was a ^ ^ scene '^ at the breakfast table she 
told me of, when her father ordered boiled eggs 
for their breakfast. She refused to eat them. He 
said he would see if she would eat them or not, 
jumped up from his chair, and started toward 
her. She also left her chair, and he chased her 
around the table until she left the room. He 
ordered her to her room where she stayed and re- 
fused to eat until a physician was called. She told 
of the physician ^s puzzled face as he examined 
her, and how he finally coaxed her not to make any 
more trouble, but to be a good girl. He was an 
old man and tender and gentle. She yielded to 
him because he asked her, and not to please her 
father, she said. 

She married and had three children, a boy and 
two girls. She knew, when she married, that she 
did not love her husband, but admired his hon- 
esty of purpose, his fine, strong, fearless determi- 
nation to do right in a business world so full of 
dishonesty and of not taking unfair advantages of 
the weakness of others. 

She told of a love affair with a man she knew 
in her girlhood. She refused to marry him, but 
did not know why, and a few months before the 
birth of her first child she met him again. The 
meeting probably caused a deeply emotional re- 
action on her part. He had clasped her hand and 
said nothing. She wished to throw herself into 

175 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

his arms, but it was a public place, and she could 
not. That was the last she knew of him. He 
served as a phantasy to dream of, but while her 
husband was exceedingly kind and indulgent to 
her he was never satisfying. She thought he 
should always compel her to attend to his wants, 
showing the father ideal was the one she re- 
spected. Her husband was successful in business. 
By giving her diamonds, automobiles, a beautiful 
house and furniture, he tried to cure the deep de- 
pressions from which she suffered; but the more 
he gave the more she hated him. Already clogged 
with her emotions she was unable to reciprocate 
until they all burst forth in a volcanic eruption. 

She went for a cold to the doctor who had 
coaxed her to be a good girl and eat. He advised 
her to go to a hospital for a few days and rest up 
and cure her cold. She did so, and then, as we so 
often find, she grew worse and felt that she was 
in a world of darkness. The terrible feeling of 
slipping away from reality, and the blackness she 
felt herself surrounded by lasted many weeks. 
She clung to the fatherly physician until relieved 
and gradually as reason returned he encouraged 
her to submit to an analysis. She had found the 
ideal father in her physician and the buried emo- 
tions were brought to the surface. To take her 
libido from the father and put it in husband and 
children and home was too difficult at first. She 
had to work her way slowly by finding herself 

176 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

alone and supporting herself. She worked in the 
linen room of a large school. As she continued 
her analysis her dreams changed as her wishes 
changed. She saw a side of life hitherto unknown. 
By comparison her home, husband and children 
seemed ideal. She sent for her husband, asked to 
be taken back. She had relinquished the child- 
hood problems of whether or not her father loved 
her, and if not why not, and was able to use aU 
her energy in her home as wife and mother. 

The cases already given in this chapter illus- 
trate the results of fixation referred to in Chapter 
IV. It is clear that in both of these girls the libido 
had become attached to a type of emotional re- 
action which was essentially infantile and that 
this fixation prevented the thirteen-year-old girl 
from developing both physically and mentally. 
The sixteen-year old, while well developed physi- 
cally, still remained a very young child emotion- 
ally, having acquired an inability to face the reali- 
ties of life, because they had been presented to her 
by her mother in a mental picture that caused fear 
to be the emotion regularly associated with the 
topic instead of respect. This is a very common 
policy on the part of the parents ; but the use of 
fear as a motive in connection with sex is by all 
odds the most supremely senseless method that 
the folly of mankind could devise. A large pro- 
portion of those in our nerve sanitariums are 
there because of an unconscious fear of sex, im- 

177 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

planted in their souls by parents, nurses or com- 
panions, and resulting in perversions of infantile 
character. Parents usually think to secure per- 
sonal purity in their children through the motive 
of fear, but this prevention of impurity is worse 
than the disease itself. It positively inhibits the 
power of life. 

CUEIOSITY 

The cosmic urge to growth in children sooner 
or later shows itself in the desire for more life in 
a phase marked by curiosity as to how they and 
other children were born, or *^ where they came 
from.'^ Parents who regard such curiosity as 
anything abnormal are indeed ignorant. It is but 
one of the many expressions of the craving for 
life. This cosmic urge, the straightest, cleanest, 
purest thing in the world, as it exists in the child, 
is in its freshness like an unblemished blade of 
grass and frequently is smutched by the foul heel 
of the parent who is fatuously unaware of what he 
has done. This craving for life meets obstacles 
of various kinds. In some children it pushes on, 
nevertheless, however marred, while in others it 
is blasted and seems not to grow at all. The ob- 
stacles encountered may be, as we have seen, un- 
reasonable demands made by a despotic father, or 
by a domineering busybody of a mother, who 
quickly represses any spontaneous outgiving on 
the child's part and remains blankly ignorant of 

178 



BURIED EMOTIONS 

the significance of the manifestations of the 
child's libido. Other bad influences too cause un- 
desirable retardation or even acceleration of the 
application of the libido to matters purely or sym- 
bolically sexual. An accelerating influence is that 
of companions or servants who have aroused too 
early, by act or word, the sexual instinct which is 
ever present but should be dormant until rightly 
used in sublimation and in marriage. Too much 
indulgence is also an accelerating factor. So are 
quarrelling parents or a home life unhappy from 
any cause. In such a case the repressed wishes 
in the unconscious, usually consisting of desires 
for freedom, where there is a domineering parent, 
or, where the parents are unhappily mated, of de- 
sires for an ideal parent to replace the disappoint- 
ing one, break forth into consciousness in various 
ways. Even a too great love for a parent who is 
actually ideal will have the same result. 

To summarize this chapter, which has to do 
with the mainspring of all human action, I may 
remind the reader again of the significance that 
sexual reproduction has in the externalization of 
the emotions. Possibly it would be better to say 
that through the emotions which can be associated 
with either internal or external activities, that is 
unsocial or social ones, the child may be led by the 
parent to attain the true adult attitude toward the 
world. The importance of the higher type of re- 
production is seen when we study the results of 

179 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

what might be called a desexuaiization of the in- 
dividual which, as I have tried to show, may be 
either physical or mental, the mental being caused 
generally by parental ignorance or inertia. Sex 
education given in an absolutely impersonal 
scientific way with the idea of impressing the child 
with its exceptionless universality is necessary in 
order to remove fear from his heart. He is once 
and for all to be freed from the impression that 
he is himself in any way unusual, abnormal, queer 
or peculiar, and that the sexual life is essentially 
bad or disgusting or to be repressed, but must be 
controlled and sublimated in work. Having as- 
sured ourselves that he suffers from no miscon- 
ception on that point, we should carefully remove 
all possible obstacles to the outflowing of his 
libido upon activities connected with the world 
outside the family; and we should strive to teach 
him how to control his vital urge instead of re- 
pressing it or having it run away with him. 



180 



CHAPTER IX 

CHILD TEAINING 

The urge of life at the age of puberty is neces- 
sarily felt by all adolescents. It is a difficult time 
for children. A great psychological change is 
taking place in them, as they are leaving their 
playtime, their toys and their make-believes for 
the real things of life. New demands for self- 
control are made upon them, their wants are of 
the nature both of child and adult. The boy imi- 
tates the man, he wants to smoke, to go out nights, 
he absorbs obscene stories which he proudly tells 
as he struts around with the air of a bantam cock. 
The girl tries to assert her individuality by a new 
way of arranging her hair, by changing her mode 
of dressing and by demands for greater freedom 
in associating with her friends. 

The natural appetites are inherited instincts, 
whose roots are found in the remotest prehistoric 
ages of the human race. Hunger for food is the 
basis of the preservation of the individual and 
hunger for the affections, for love and for friend- 
ship is the basis of the preservation of the species. 
All appetites (various modes of the manifestation 
of the libido) imply a wish and belong to the 
motor side of nervous activity. In them there is 

181 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

some internal urge to outward action for the pur- 
pose of satisfying hunger, whether for food or 
love. The nerve mechanisms which function in 
expressing the appetites are a lower order of 
mechanism, being centred in the more primitive 
nerve cells, and thus belong to a class of actions 
otherwise called automatic. They function of 
themselves apart from, and independently of, con- 
sciousness, which, however, can and must gain 
control of these instinctive activities during the 
period of adolescence. 

This automatic nature of the appetites gives 
them the privilege, however, of drawing upon the 
limitless force of the unconscious. They are in 
a sense nearer to the source of life itself. With- 
out our being aware of what we are doing, these 
truly inward and vital forces send us forth to acts 
which frequently are directly opposed to the high- 
est conscious desires. If not controlled they have 
the power to stunt and paralyse what might be 
called the psychic muscles which in educated 
people ought to be strongly developed. But in 
many educated men this psychic muscle, by which 
I mean more than ordinary will power, is so flabby 
that they have not the strength to resist tempta- 
tions. 

The primitive man within them is never con- 
trolled but is always keenly alive and active, en- 
deavouring to secure the gratification of primitive 
desires. When the unconscious gets control of 

182 



CHILD TRAINING 

their actions, they are as it is called ** carried 
away*' by visionary schemes, investing the money 
of their best friends, and even of the members of 
their own families in the gamble of unwise specu- 
lations. They are extravagant in gratifying their 
tastes, knowing well, however, that they must neg- 
lect their ethical and religious principles in satis- 
fying these selfish and unsocial desires. They 
must borrow from their self-respect in order to 
pay for their indulgences. These phenomena all 
show that the archaic nature of man is very near 
the surface, constantly breaking through the thin 
shell of civilization. The desire to get something 
for nothing, to accumulate and to hoard, irrespec- 
tive of the manner of acquirement (all unsocial 
desires) would be carried to such extremes that 
the race would become extinct, if they were not in 
most cases outweighed by the stronger instinct of 
reproduction in direct opposition to the accumu- 
lating or hoarding instinct. The latter is a grasp- 
ing, the former a surrendering attitude. 

The fact of the fusion of the two cells at the 
moment of inception of a human life, and the fact 
that each parent in order to receive has to give 
something, thus becomes the moral basis of the 
necessity for apparent giving up, relinquishing 
some part of the ego, of letting go instead of 
grasping tightly. One must sow in order to reap. 
The farmer has to bury expensive seed in the 
ground; and in all spheres of human life giving 

183 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

has to precede getting, no matter what the kind of 
gain, whether it be children or money. In science, 
art, literature or labour we must give to our work 
our best efforts, backed by all our interest and all 
our cosmic jirge of life. No work is adequate ac- 
tivity for our powers unless it is a work which 
arouses our deepest and most pervasive emotions. 

LIBEKATION OF LIBIDO 

^^ Liberation'' and * libido" are both from the 
same Latin word which means a freeing, or desire 
to be freed, from obstructions, and both are de- 
scendants, together with English *4ove'' from the 
common Sanskrit ancestor luhh — desire. It hap- 
pens that the instinctive acts (through which the 
individual frees himself, exercises his muscles or 
any part of his personality and, at the same time, 
secures the relaxation of the tension of his un- 
conscious desires) frequently interfere with the 
same sort of liberation of energy on the part of 
other people. This is the cause of the inevitable 
opposition between society and the individual, an 
opposition which society has to exert, without 
which it could not exist. But in order for the 
community to prosper, the individual's instinctive 
modes of liberation of energy have to be con- 
trolled. This means the suppression of some 
wishes and the training of others. One of the 
simplest illustrations is the young child's in- 

184 



CHILD TRAINING 

stlnct to throw things. In throwing there is a 
paroxysmal activity reaching an acme, which is an 
absence of all control. As the freeing of energy 
is accomplished in animals, including humans, 
with the maximum degree ol the feeling we call 
pleasure, that form of liberation which is least ac- 
companied by any other conscious condition is the 
most pleasurable. Throwing gives a child this 
form of pleasure in a high degree. So do kicking, 
jumping, running and the aimless exercise of all 
the voluntary muscles. It explains the tremen- 
dous popularity of baseball, where the players al- 
ternate between comparative rest and a paroxysm 
of action in which they liberate absolutely all of 
their available energy, the players in their strikes 
and runs, the ^^fans*' in their applause (see Chap- 
ter X). In the baseball game this liberation is 
secured in a manner which is acceptable to the 
community while aimless throwing on the part of 
young children has not only no social value but it 
has frequently a real injury connected with it. 

Figuratively speaking, then, the aim of child 
training is to get the child to throw according to 
the rules of a game. This requires him sometimes 
to withhold his action and watch that of another 
until his turn comes. One sees immediately how 
difficult this waiting is, for young children. All 
want to act at once. Now the energy which the 
child is holding in, while he is waiting for his 
turn has to be liberated eventually if not im- 

185 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

mediately. Furthermore, it ought to be accom- 
panied by a pleasure as great as, and preferably 
greater than, that of merely auto-erotic kicking, 
jumping, hitting and throwing. But in some home 
environments this is impossible. I shall have 
more to say about these auto-erotic muscular ac- 
tivities in a later chapter. Due to a very pardon- 
able lack of knowledge on the part of the parents, 
many children are suppressed without being given 
the opportunity to discharge their accumulated 
vitality, to liberate their libido, in ways which 
give them pleasure. Instead they are forced to 
discharge the accumulation in ways which are dis- 
tinctly painful, or at least uncomfortable, for all 
concerned, but particularly for the child himself, 
who thereby acquires a habit of experiencing pain- 
ful emotions. 

PLEASURE IN PAIN 

The habit of experiencing painful emotions is 
acquired through the pleasure which is associated 
with pain itself. Naturally, any discharge of ac- 
cumulated vitality is accompanied with a distinct 
sense of pleasure. But when the natural pleas- 
ure experienced by all children at the time of this 
discharge is associated with an adventitious pain 
administered by parents, there is a link estab- 
lished between pleasure and paiQ. The pleasure 
is there in every escapade, clouded more or less 
darkly with approaching or actually inflicted pun- 

186 



CHILD TRAINING 

ishment. Parents have universally thought that 
punishment is necessary, and indeed it appears 
to be the most potent and instantaneous means of 
putting a quietus on the unsocial activity of the 
child. But when at the end of the day the stream 
is no longer wanted to run the mill, the miller does 
not yell at it to stop running, nor does he try to 
dam it higher. He diverts the water from the mill 
race to the spillway, where it continues on its 
seaward journey. The flowing of the stream can- 
not safely be stopped, and the miller knows it. 
The activity of the child cannot be stopped, but 
the parent does not know this. He simply com- 
mands '^Shut up!'' to something which if suc- 
cessfully ^^shut up'' must sooner or later explode 
in crime or burn slowly in neurosis. In the bash- 
ful, diffident, shifting eye of the pale-faced, stoop- 
ing, hollow-chested and round-shouldered child 
we see the shut-up child, generally shut up by the 
excusable ignorance of parent or hireling substi- 
tute. Every one of these children is an economic 
loss to the country, a centre of force which could 
be devoted to the health and welfare of their f el- 
lowmen, had not they been almost hopelessly 
blasted like peach blossoms by an early frost — 
the frost of the ignorance of those who attempted 
(or did not attempt) to bring them up. 

If, with everything he has to do, a child is 
taught to associate unpleasantness instead of a 
sense of power and triumph he is not only given 

187 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

a mental twist which makes him see everything 
wrongly, but one which prevents him from acting 
wholesomely in every most intimate relation of a 
later love life. 

CEEATIVE EMOTIONS 

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the 
pleasurable emotions are the creative ones which 
build up, or furnish the most favourable condi- 
tions for building up, the tissues of the body and 
thus making for both mental and physical health. 
Nor can it be too strongly emphasized that the un- 
pleasurable emotions are destructive and make 
for both physical and mental illness. It should 
above all never be forgotten that it is frequently, 
if not always, possible for the parent or teacher 
to choose which of these two emotions is to be 
felt by the child in connection with any required 
activity. Such choice is possible for the one in 
charge of the child but never for the child him- 
self, because he is only a creature of instinct who 
must react with pleasure or pain according to pre- 
historic modes of feeling until pleasure is recom- 
bined with required or directed acts instead of 
with undirected acts. This is exactly what is 
meant by the trained or social liberation of the 
libido — the direction of it from one thing to an- 
other, either one of which may do quite as well 
for the child as a means of getting the relaxation 
of his accumulated tension. 

188 



CHILD TRAINING 

A very simple and concrete illustration of this 
recombination is seen in the mother's suggestion 
of a choice. *^Do you want/' she says, **to take 
your magnesia in a teaspoon or a tablespoon?" 
*'Do you want to sit in a chair or stand up?" 
This offering a choice gives the child an oppor- 
tunity of making the act, at first rejected as the 
enforced requirement on the part of another, an 
act almost completely his own. Then a bit of 
praise as to how well he is taking the medicine, or 
how fast he can take it, or some encouraging re- 
mark will still further link the act with pleas- 
urable emotion and the sense of power on which 
the emotion is based. He may even be induced to 
attain the acme of a throw in accomplishing an 
act which is forced upon him from without, as 
when a stick is tied by a long string to a loose 
tooth. But the choice is the thing which gives 
the child the chance to feel, '*I will take this. This 
will be mine/' and to make in his soul the con- 
nection between what ought to he done and what is 
done with pleasure. 

The entire mechanism of life is affected when 
the free outflow of these creative emotions is 
interfered with, whether they show themselves in 
the play of children or in the affections, or the 
serious work of adults. It is not alone the affec- 
tion or the sympathy which is arrested but every 
mental activity supporting .those higher mani- 
festations, much as the stopping of a trolley car 

189 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

for too long a time congests traffic and blocks all 
the cars on the track behind it. Just so, if the 
actions to which the mind prompts us are blocked, 
those ideas in the mind are blocked and the actual 
contractions of the muscles are impeded, resulting 
in the innumerable forms of nervousness and in 
the bodily or functional disturbances. The block- 
ing of the libido has been mentioned previously. 
I will give here an illustration of how a man suf- 
fered from an actual lack of ability to express the 
finer emotions, because in his childhood the op- 
portunities for this outlet were denied to him by 
the circumstances of his family environment. 

AN EMOTIONALLY STARVED MAN 

A man of forty-five came for analysis. He was 
married and had eight children and a charming 
wife, unusually patient with her nervous husband. 
The children were all of good growth and mental 
development. The patient had been one of a large 
family, one of the older children. His parents 
had been very poor, the father an unskilled 
labourer, a hard unyielding man who was never 
demonstrative of affection for his wife or chil- 
dren, though he sometimes realized that a better 
education would have lifted him up out of the con- 
dition of day labourer. On account of her fre- 
quent pregnancies, the mother was unable to keep 
her home neat or to care for her children, who 
ran in the streets like homeless dogs. The babies 

190 



CHILD TRAINING 

were often sick, and some died. The patient went 
to the public schools, but was never asked to the 
homes of other boys as his clothes were too poor 
and ragged. He seemed to have been born with 
more mental ability than the other children, those 
at present living being all i^ailures, either sick or 
of low mentality. In his childhood he was sur- 
rounded with illness and filth, ugliness of scenery, 
misery and neglect. He had no care from his 
mother and no one to give his affections to, a 
condition necessary for the spiritual health of 
every child. He had a great horror of his de- 
pressing surroundings, and somehow worked his 
way through school and into college, and finally 
became a successful business man. He was al- 
ways very restless in his home life, and while his 
children were very dear to him when they were 
young he took little interest in them after they 
were six or seven years of age, but gave his affec- 
tion to the next baby. Although he admired and 
respected his wife for being a perfect mother to 
her children, he could not feel the warm love for 
her that he desired to feel. 

As the years passed on he was still uncon- 
sciously reverting to the problems of his child- 
hood. There had been no one for him to love, and 
he still longed for the mother love denied him in 
his youth, for some one to love ; but he could not 
give his love to those around him or to any one 
else, although he tried to find in a prostitute what 

191 



THE PBOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

lie lacked in Ms home. His life gradually grew 
narrower. As Ms mother had died of heart 
trouble, he had constantly in his mind the fear 
that he had inherited her weak heart. He began 
to have attacks, with great difficulty in breathing. 
Doctors pronounced his heart strong but he did 
not believe them. He was afraid to go away from 
home, fearing one of his attacks would come on 
and he would die. His sufferings grew more in- 
tense, and he felt that suicide or insanity awaited 
him. He had married Ms first love, and Ms con- 
duct in the long run had been faithful to her, but 
his fidelity brought him no comfort. All his crea- 
tive activities in children and in large financial 
successes were no satisfaction to Mm. Analysis 
revealed him still struggling to express his child- 
ish emotions, blocked by his unhappy young years 
and to make them free to go forth from himself 
to others, to his wife and children. He could not 
love as a man. 

Not being able to love as a man should love 
implies that there are certain reactions on the 
part of adults which a child looks for. The child 
rightly expects his mother to do certain things to 
and for him. This patient, who had not received 
when a child the attentions which a child has a 
right to expect from his mother, had still in his 
unconscious what might at least be compared to 
a tension so formed that it could only be relaxed 
by a reaction, characteristically maternal, on his 

192 



CHILD TRAINING 

mother's part. It was the lack of this relaxation 
in his childhood which caused it to play so great 
and so detrimental a role in his middle age. For 
example, he dreamed that he was taking dinner 
with the President in a toy house, and he dreamed 
of other very childish activities. The existence of 
these thoughts in his dreams revealed his essen- 
tial childishness, which did not, however, prevent 
his being a successful man with very large inter- 
ests in the business world. But in his family he 
not only affected more his younger children, find- 
ing them more companionable, but he expected 
from his wife a variety of appreciation which 
usually a child gets from his mother and no com- 
pletely adult man looks for from his wife. Thus 
we get a clearer idea of the nature of emotions 
that are intrinsically childish. They are relaxa- 
tions of tensions that are fixed in childhood upon 
ideas that generally occur only in childhood. 
When such fixations occur, and persist into adult- 
hood, they account for most of the discontent and 
dissatisfaction which clouds their spirits and 
makes futile even material success and the unsel- 
fish devotion of a loving wife. 

This patient was still, in spite of his brilliant 
business career, carrying the burden of his child- 
ish misery, which had turned his affections inward 
toward himself. Because of his fixations he could 
not liberate his entire libido upon the adult world 
in which he lived. 

193 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

In his case, the buried creative emotions, which 
had been so thwarted and rebuffed whenever he 
turned to his parents for sympathy or under- 
standing were plainly evident in his manner of 
speaking and thinking and in the symptoms of his 
attacks. The usual prescription of nerve tonics, 
rest and change made him much worse, as they 
increased the emotional content which he was at 
best unable to express. Plainly he had been a 
victim of his environment. It was surprising that 
he was not understood before the psychoanalytic 
investigation was begun. 

The task of resurrecting the feelings which have 
been buried in the unconscious is no easy one but 
it is one of the most gratifying. In spite of the 
weeds and the rubbish which have accumulated 
for years, blocking the progress of the libido, we 
know in each case that the urge of life exists and 
that it needs only to be freed from obstruction to 
give it the productiveness which evolution de- 
mands of it. 

The chief problem in social living is the exter- 
nalization of the libido in such a way that all the 
individuals composing society may live their lives 
to the utmost. The obstructions which individuals 
and society place in the way are not all necessary. 
If the unnecessary ones were entirely removed 
from the lives of children the next generation 
would be a superior type of humanity. 



194 



CHAPTEE X 

MUSCLE EROTISM 

All animals, especially young ones, experience 
peculiar sensations of a pleasurable nature when 
using their muscles in a manner which we call 
playing. The frisking of a kitten, the gambol of 
young lambs, the racing of colts in the pasture, 
the ceaseless movements of children, a gleam in 
the eyes, certain involuntary movements impulsive 
and quick, sudden springs, wild leaps, show the 
irresistible and dynamic power of the driving 
force within prompting movement and allowing 
the energy escape and free play. After a period 
of rest the animal starts up again, dashing off, 
occasionally rushing in a blind fury of passion, 
like a runaway horse, unable to stop in a mad 
race with destruction which if it meets with no 
obstruction runs on and on until exhausted. It 
is said that a horse that has once run away can 
never again be trusted; he has felt the wild ex- 
hilaration in excess of motion. What is the satis- 
faction felt by the horse that when once felt he 
will seek again! What is the pleasure the kitten 
feels in scampering around the floor, chasing 
imaginary mice? College athletics afford a simi- 
lar outlet of energy. It is not for the sake of exer- 

195 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

cise to keep a healthful flow of blood over the 
body, that a boy will undergo sacrifices in train- 
ing, in dieting, in giving up drinking or smoking, 
all the while looking forward to the game with 
the keenest anticipation. Dancing is another in- 
stance of the great joy in motion with the rhyth- 
mic melody of the music adding to the emotional 
and physical outlet. 

It seems as though in nature's forces, in the 
wind, electricity, radio-activity, there is always 
motion. The energy of the universe is expressed 
in motion, and from the sun, the source of energy, 
comes the power which promotes growth and life 
which is motion. We speak of time as motion 
when we say: ^^Time moves on; time flies,'' and 
our conception of life is a constant moving on. 
Therefore, when we command the child to sit down 
and be quiet, in reality we are telling the child to 
kill a part of himself — we are telling time to stop, 
to stand still. We cannot stop the hidden forces 
of nature in motion described as energy, as when 
the wind blows a tornado, or the electricity flashes 
in the thunder cloud. We can only control them 
and use them to our advantage, but as in the blast 
of the tempest, the outburst of the volcano, the 
convulsion of the earthquake, these mighty forces 
bid us defiance, as though the tiny atoms of power 
in man were of a thing apart from nature itself. 
So, in the onrush of life in the adolescent years 
we are powerless to prevent the tremendous 

196 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

strength of the instinct of reproduction. It must 
be guided or led into other forms of energy, lifted 
up out of the gross sexual into work or business 
interests, science, art, literature or whatever 
natural tastes and ability a person has. 



SUBLIMATION 

The expending of this energy in other forms 
we call, technically speaking, a sublimation. It 
must be expended, it must come out, it cannot be 
repressed, stifled or shut in. It is impossible to 
do so without creating perversions of character 
and ruining health. The most remarkable thing is 
that parents, teachers, people in general, cannot 
understand this. A mother punishes her child by 
making it sit quietly in a chair for half an hour, 
an eternity to a child, and in about two minutes 
the child says : * ^ Mother, I wish you would spank 
me, then I could go and play." On former occa- 
sions a spanking had been administered, and the 
child sent out after sobs mistaken for repentance 
— of which a child knows nothing. A few more 
minutes and the child says : ^* Mother, please spank 
me, then it will be over and I can go out.'' The 
mother concludes spankings are failures and won- 
ders what other forms of punishment would be 
more effective. The sins of omission or commis- 
sion have left no impression on the childish mind. 
To the child it is only something which mothers 

197 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

do, ^^but when I am big I will make her sorry," 
runs through the promises of revenge which a 
child often feels from the parent's unjust and 
ignorant discipline. The child cannot help being 
a child, he must be active, restless, always want- 
ing to do something, but if left to himself from the 
hour of his birth, that is, not rocked, trotted and 
tended, he will grow up with more resources in 
himself, his brain will be more active in finding 
and searching out schemes for play and make- 
believes of childhood. 

The complaint is frequently made that we can- 
not bring up our children as we were brought up. 
No, of course not. In our childhood life we were 
not surrounded with motor-cycles, automobiles, 
moving-picture shows, plays suggestive of sexual 
problems, crowded apartment house life. If you 
tempt a baby with diamonds it will cry for them, 
without any idea of their precious value. If your 
boy is brought up amidst other boys who are in- 
dulged with money, automobiles, tobacco, even 
cocktails and late hours, of course he will cry for 
them. The daughter who lives amidst rouge, arti- 
ficially waved hair, exaggerated styles of dress, 
exciting novels, will not find her joy and pleasure 
in muscle-activity of housework, out-of-door 
games, walking and an open-air life. Not all 
muscular activities in youth are due to ^'the call 
of the wild," nor are they always accompanied 
by pleasurable sensations. It is when a child 

198 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

without any apparent reason, leaps, turns somer- 
saults, goes through various gymnastics, runs 
when he might just as well walk, that we find the 
muscle erotic. He climbs anything he can find 
to climb, begs for work when he really means some 
kind of muscular activity. School is irksome be- 
cause he must sit still, the athletics are the sole 
attraction but he frequently fails in them because 
he does not use his muscles to strengthen them but 
to play with them. He enjoys boxing and wrest- 
ling, not to conquer with skill but in an easy 
struggle, sort of a make-believe wrestle. He is' 
always ready to jump and run on any errand, but 
seldom accomplishes it well. Horseback riding is 
a favourite, for he gets muscular activity without 
any effort on his part. Swimming he likes fairly 
well, but when swimming he must keep moving, 
and he likes to move by fits and starts with sudden 
springs. He sleeps heavily and awakens with 
difficulty. 

The muscle-erotic individual does not possess 
an intellectual or artistic temperament ; he is usu- 
ally tall, more especially from the waist down. 
He is fond of dancing; I have seen the face light 
up then with a brilliant expression never seen at 
any other time. I recall a six-year-old girl, a 
muscle erotic. She never walked if she could 
possibly run, and a smile came as she started to 
run. It was remarked that she always looked so 
pleased with herself as she ran. **What are you 

199 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 

thinking of!" she was asked when she was run- 
ning; no answer, but a shy look and a drawing 
away from the questioner as though unable to tell 
her thoughts. A fourteen-year-old brother had 
the same inclination to run and keep up the same 
restless, muscular movements. The little girl was 
very thin, she was given many tonics of iron and 
other supposed strengthening properties; the 
brother was also thin, he ran so much his health 
suffered seriously. In vain the father coaxed, at- 
tempted to bribe, and then to punish them both, 
in order to make them walk, and be quiet. 

I remember one summer when the family ar- 
rived at their summer home where there was a 
small lake half a mile around; the brother in- 
stantly jumped from the carriage and disap- 
peared. Later he was discovered running around 
this lake, and panting, breathless, with heart 
rapidly beating and ignoring the calls to stop un- 
til he was forcibly caught. *^What are you doing 
this fori" demanded the perplexed father. The 
boy had no idea why, he was enjoying it hugely 
and was as excited as a race horse. He was so 
pale from excitement his father was alarmed and 
put the boy to bed, while the boy struggled to get 
away and declared if he were confined he would 
have a fit. I have often recalled that case when 
working years afterwards with epileptics, for they 
cannot get out to the surface the inward excite- 
ment they feel, and do have fits. 

200 



MUSCLE EROTISM 



A MUSCLE EROTIC 



An exaggerated case was a fifteen-year-old boy 
who had been giving his parents considerable trou- 
ble as he approached adolescence. He lived in a 
city with his father and mother and two yonnger 
sisters whom he continually teased. The parents 
found him unusually restless as a child. The 
father, a business man with large interests, left 
much of the training of his children to his wife, 
who was a very capable and intelligent woman. 
In taking the history of the case I learned that 
the boy when born refused to nurse his mother. 
No amount of patience or skill could make the 
baby take the nipple in his mouth, but he nursed 
readily from a bottle. From the parents' point 
of view he never was a child they could feel com- 
fortable with, as with his two sisters. They told 
of obscene stories he had imparted to a little girl, 
of perverted sexual wishes he had been overheard 
to express, of stealing money and an Ingersoll 
watch which he tried to sell. When thirteen he 
was expelled from a boarding-school for smoking, 
and was sent to school in his home city and lived 
at home. He was a very disturbing member of 
the family, teasing his sisters, annoying his 
mother by careless and untidy ways, troubling his 
father with demands for privileges which only an 
older boy should enjoy. These were denied and 
the boy was very unhappy and ran away to a 

201 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

neighbouring town, was lonely and telephoned 
where he was, and was glad to return home. 

The home conditions were made a little stricter 
as the parents felt such a misdemeanour could 
not pass unnoticed. The father administered 
corporal punishment, asking the boy first if he 
thought that would help him to be a better boy. 
The boy seemed very penitent and said perhaps 
it would. But in a few more months he again 
ran away, and again the father brought him home 
with more admonitions against wrong-doing. The 
third time the boy ran away he went farther and 
concealed his whereabouts from his family, but 
wrote to a little girl he was fond of. She, with a 
woman's intuition of the suffering his family must 
be enduring without knowledge of their son, told 
them. The father followed up the boy, and just 
in time to rescue him from a position which would 
have taken him to the war zone of Europe, sought 
medical aid, and brought him for an analysis of 
his mental condition which caused the running and 
uncontrolled escape of the nervous energy. 

After his confidence was partially gained, the 
boy's point of view was gradually drawn out as 
follows: He was not happy as a child, never al- 
lowed to do anything. Was always being pun- 
ished, sometimes licked, sometimes scolded. 
When five years old was in New York for his 
birthday, remembered the train ride, then to his 
uncle's house on the Hudson River; was shown 

202 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

boats on the river. There was a birthday cake, he 
wanted more cake, could not have it, he was stub- 
born about it, crawled under the table and cried. 
Remembered trip to a seaside place, caught min- 
nows, saw a saw-mill and marvelled at the swift 
rush of water, used to watch sail-boat races. Was 
at Summer Camp for four years, first year did not 
get on well, cried easily, was fat, but next year 
was athletic and strong. At the Country Club, 
summers, was not allowed to do as other boys did. 
Glad he was freed from the boarding-school, it 
was full of filthy talk and vile actions. Finished 
with all such stuff, could behave himself better in 
such respects, sure of that. 

This description in his own language, tells how 
things of his childhood seemed to the boy. When 
he used the phrase ^^ marvelled at the swift rush 
of water " a glimpse was afforded of the uncon- 
scious. He was resistant, accusing parents and all 
authority of not being fair to him. Whether these 
ideas were just or were delusions of persecutions 
I could not tell then, but I formed the impression 
there was some truth in his assertions. Prom his 
tone of voice, the far-away look, his eyes were still 
seeing in memory the swift rushing water and still 
feeling the wonder of the irresistible current driv- 
ing the heavy machinery and the saw cutting its 
way through the heart of the massive, stately 
trees — in a word, he was beholding the wonders of 
life. There was a great rush of life in him which 

203 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

made it too hard to stand the restrictions and com- 
plaints of home training. His great desire was to 
break away from family ties — to fly out of the 
home nest with his newly grown power. 

He was sent to board in the summer home of a 
family who understood something of the period of 
*^ storm and stress " through which he was pass- 
ing, and allowed all the liberty possible. After he 
had arrived he immediately put on his khaki 
clothes and announced himself as ready for 
work. An acre of lawn had just been trimmed, so 
she sent him to the garage to polish the auto- 
mobile. In an hour there was an arrival an- 
nounced — the boy and the auto which he had 
rubbed and wanted to show. Then it was time to 
clean and make himself presentable for dinner, 
which he did. In the early evening on the porch 
and on the lawn he kept up a series of gymnastics, 
standing on the porch railing, leaning far out, 
springing as though falling and catching a porch 
post as though he had had a narrow escape. 
Every one who saw him was startled but before 
the evening was over they were accustomed to 
his hairbreadth escapes. On the lawn he swung 
from tree branches; climbing a tree, he would 
somehow crash from the top through the branches 
with yells, but would be seen safely dangling from 
a lower branch with feet near the ground. A 
period of unrest was followed by a quiet spell. 
His pipe would be leisurely filled and lighted, and 

204 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

with book, magazine or newspaper lie would 
sprawl on ground or hammock. There was a 
young kitten which he was fond of, but handled 
so roughly we bought him a bull-dog for a play- 
mate. There was scampering and chasing over 
the lawn with the dog, jumping, climbing over 
roofs, with quiet spells following, but of short 
duration. There was a constant demand for 
money which he spent promptly, at various shows, 
candy, swimming at the lake, trips in every direc- 
tion. 

He slept so heavily no glimpses of the uncon- 
scious could be shown him as he remembered no 
dreams. Telling him why he was so restless was 
useless. He seemed very contented until he re- 
turned from one of his afternoon trips off and was 
told a member of his family had been there to see 
him. A sullen look appeared on his face. ** Can't 
they let me alone here?" was his reply. He was 
unusually quiet that evening, petting his dog, 
smoking his pipe, and going to bed early. He was 
not called early the next morning and came down 
about ten o 'clock. After eating breakfast he was 
very restless, going in and out of the house. 
Through the open windows came an odour of some- 
thing burning ; seeing him just coming in the front 
door his hostess questioned about the smell of 
smoke. ** It's only my pipe. Miss K," he said, 
and again went out the door, but returned in a 
minute shouting the basement was on fire. His 

205 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 

hostess called up the fire department before see- 
ing the fire, then found it was under a side porch 
standing about six feet from the ground and full 
of a collection of empty boxes, boards, excelsior 
and old newspapers ; it was surrounded by lattice 
work; a glass door, fastened, led to the lawn, an- 
other door supposed to be fastened opened into the 
cellar which the boy called the basement, but the 
latter door was not fastened. 

The fire was extinguished before the fire engines 
arrived, as the house stood on a hill, and the fire 
engines had great difficulty in making the grade. 
The boy, with a beaming face, rushed around in 
wild excitement, smashed in the glass door, ran 
with pails of water. He ran to the road to help 
the fire engines by guiding them to the fire, giving 
orders with excited activity. After the engines 
had assembled and the yard was full of people the 
question was raised as to the origin of the fire, 
and the boy instantly said it was spontaneous 
combustion as the place was full of old oily rags 
and papers. Several onlookers among the crowd 
accepted the theory of spontaneous combustion; 
the Fire Chief heard the boy loudly announc- 
ing his theory of spontaneous combustion, 
rushed up to him and began asking: ^* Where 
were you when the fire started? Who was with 
you when the fire started? Who was with you 
before the fire started^ The boy became very 
pale, announced rapidly that he had just finished 

206 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

his breakfast and was starting out for a walk 
with another boy when he saw the flames. The 
Fire Chief evidently believed none of it and said: 
* ' Young man, you want to be careful that I do not 
have to come up this hill again or you will have 
to go down with me.'' 

At the dinner table the boy again declared his 
explanation of the fire starting by spontaneous 
combustion, but he happened to be in the presence 
of some learned people who thoroughly under- 
stood the principle of spontaneous combustion, 
and they explained to the boy what nonsense he 
was talking, and how difficult it was to produce 
spontaneous combustion, as the professors had 
tried to do so in the chemical laboratory but had 
never succeeded. After dinner another boy said 
what fun they had had, *^ quite some excitement 
and how quick the crowd gathered, where did they 
all come from?" And the boy's reply, ^'You bet, 
it was great, but the people here make me sick, 
think they know it all. Why, of course, the fire 
was caused by spontaneous combustion, the place 
was just full of oily rags and you know how easy 
they burn, you cannot go anywhere near them 
with fire or a lighted match, and the sun was shin- 
ing in there hot." 

* ' No, ' ' said the second boy. * ' I know there were 
no oily rags in there, as last week it was very cold, 
and I was in there trying to get some stuff to start 
a fire in the fireplace. There was some excelsior 

207 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

and old papers, but no oily ones. I hate to touch 
oily things. You can't fool me.'' 

The family concluded to take a long auto ride ; 
it was Sunday afternoon, the boy refused to go, 
said he was tired, wanted to sleep, had hurt him- 
self fighting the fire. He looked pale, sat in deep 
thought with a peculiar look of disgust on his 
face, as though nauseated, complained of feeling 
dull from eating too much. The family started 
off for their ride, the boy put his dog in the car, 
and waved good-bye. The housekeeper saw him 
working on a lock that was out of order on the 
bathroom door, and supposed he went to his room. 
When the family returned the boy was missing. 
As night came on and the boy did not return, it 
was evident he had taken a fourth adventure in 
running away. It was two days before he tele- 
graphed from a distant city saying he would ex- 
plain all. We knew the boy had no money and we 
wondered how he had managed the financial part 
of his adventure, and learned later that he had 
searched for a cheque-book he had seen his hostess 
using, found it, filled out a cheque for a sum of 
odd dollars and cents; and with the assurance of 
youth started empty-handed on his travels. He 
had asked an old man to cash the cheque on some 
pretext which was believed, and took a train for a 
far-distant city. A realization of the seriousness 
of his crime came to him as he had to sit quietly 
during the long train ride. The child part of him 

208 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

was afraid, he felt a strong desire to see his home, 
his father (who was the most remarkable man in 
the son's eyes), his little sisters and his mother 
who he had formerly felt was the canse of his 
troubles at home and had caused his earlier run- 
aways. 

When the parents saw their son and heard his 
confession, their suffering was truly pitiful, but 
the torture which parents endure with their way- 
ward children cannot be described. They arose 
to the occasion with more insight than we usually 
find in such cases. They asked the boy what he 
was going to do next; he answered, ''Go back 
and face the music,'' and felt that he would be 
received and forgiven with a lecture as his parents 
had done with his previous escapades. But with 
the knowledge of the unconscious complexes, we 
knew that it was but a question of time before his 
energy would accumulate and owing to his com- 
plexes it could not be used in legitimate channels, 
but that he would feel compelled to do some dan- 
gerous, perhaps criminal, act for relief. His 
muscle-play was only a substitute during the gath- 
ering storm, or, to use a simple comparison, his 
muscle-play only furnished as much satisfaction 
to his energy as a piece of candy satisfies our 
hunger in comparison to a real meal of meat and 
vegetables. Therefore, when he so willingly 
started back to his wronged hostess, we knew that 
it was useless for her to forgive and give him 

209 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 

another chance to do better in the old-fashioned 
way. There would be a repetition. The boy was 
running away from himself, from his childhood, 
from the great love of his parents, for they were 
adorable people in a happy home life, from the 
temptations to remain a child with them and give 
up to laziness and be a ''girl-boy." He did not 
know these were the reasons of his attempts to run 
away — that the great urge of life frightened him. 
When at home he ran away; when away he ran 
home. These reasons existed in the unconscious. 
We could see his symptomatic acts, but there 
had been no convincing dreams to help him to get 
the necessary emotional acts, for the intellectual 
knowledge is not sufficient, it must be felt on the 
principle that a singed cat dreads the fire. He 
had previously been told that a mind that allows 
itself such weak indulgences would never gain 
strength and would have a jelly-fish character, 
just soft and yielding ; he had scoffed at the idea, 
such preaching he pretended did not interest him, 
as he could do anything, was quite omnipotent in 
his own estimation. I knew that underneath the 
incorrigible exterior was a very soft baby heart, 
but he had it too well covered by his muscle 
eroticism to permit work upon it. Something had 
to be done to make an impression more lasting 
and convincing than mere words. He would have 
to see the results of minds untilled, choked up 
with words instead of thoughts, minds that were 

210 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

not producing but shirking. His New England 
home people would not understand that prompt 
measures must be taken, but the responsibility 
must be met. The boy arrived and approached 
with his usual jaunty air, evidently he was ready 
to frisk and play after his train ride. He was 
taken to an office, the laws of his country were 
read to him, the logic of law explained to him 
and the legal penalty of his misdemeanour. He 
listened but was not much affected; he was then 
taken to a hospital, shown the nervous wrecks 
of humanity; he looked on them with supreme 
contempt. He was not showing negativism, his 
libido was not separated or split, it was all in 
himself, and called for measures to act as a purga- 
tive for his emotions. He was left in the hospital 
all night, his clothes locked up and for the first 
time in his life he was obliged to face a reality 
and could not run away from it. 

The next morning there was the welcome sight 
of tears ; the emotions were working, not the lack 
of emotional reaction, the apathy which we had 
feared. He declared he could eat nothing and 
begged to go away. It was just noon. With- 
drawing to an adjoining room I saw a generous 
tray of food — soup, meat, vegetables and dessert 
— carried to him. He ate with good appetite — 
the emotions were not disturbed too much. In the 
afternoon visit no questions were asked. We 
waited for him to volunteer information beyond 

211 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NEBVOUS CHHiD 

asking to return to Ms former hostess. She had 
refused to see him again, so he could not go there. 
He asked: '^If my father returns her the money I 
took why can't I go back there T' His parents 
always forgave him. Why should not every one! 
The second day he was running around the corri- 
dor amusing the patients with his gymnastics, and 
again asking for work, was told to polish the floors. 
The third day he was taken from the hospital 
and put in charge of a private male nurse, a young 
man who accompanied the boy on trips around 
the city, living in rooms and eating out in res- 
taurants with the intention of providing an envi- 
ronment sufficiently interesting to call out the 
libido from himself. The sightseeing succeeded in 
arousing his energy, but resulted in a greater de- 
sire for freedom. The unconscious pictures were 
very hard to get from him. A fragment showed 
him as riding wooden horses at a merry-go-round 
— no life — no life in the life he was living — not real 
— going around in a circle, was the way life seemed 
to him. He complained that he could never do 
what other boys did (owning an automobile, keep- 
ing late hours) and that his parents always treated 
him like a two-year-old. But, really, the father 
had made the mistake of making a companion of 
the boy in talking and explaining business affairs, 
politics and subjects for adult life. The boy ad- 
mired the father's keen business ability, but of 
course his mind was not capable of work equal to 

212 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

Ms father's so that the father's conversation be- 
came very irksome to him. 

Another glimpse into the unconscious was: 
^^Went to school in N. Y., strict school, they beat 
me, a book was given us to study, ^ Bugs of Central 
America.' I didn't open the book. Every after- 
noon after school I went home and slept on the 
sidewalk." He symbolized his analysis as the 
*'Bugs." Bugs were a nuisance, he said, and he 
paid no attention to his analysis (didn't open the 
book). Life was hard (sidewalk). No one no- 
ticed him, public passed him by. 

I sent him, with his nurse, to the theatres to 
watch his reactions to plays that I had seen; one 
called ^' Tiger Eose," a play with a murder. He 
saw the play, and sure enough, the murder was 
the part which interested him. He was getting 
very tired of his man-nurse, and the unconscious 
thoughts seized upon the plot of the play to ex- 
press the boy's wishes to get rid of the nurse, said 
he felt as though he was always being followed — 
had no freedom. His obtaining money dishon- 
estly was the sense of guilt which gave him the 
feeling of always being followed. I did not want 
him to have a sense of guilt, but rather to realize 
his mistake. If that and the feeling of being 
followed continued there would be another kind 
of trouble started. He knew we could neither 
trust him nor could he trust himself. He made 
no effort to earn confidence, but made up his mind 

213 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

he had to endure the being watched. Each day he 
was more listless and uninterested. During the 
hours of analysis certain subjects brought the re- 
action of painful emotions, seen in the eyes. He 
had not attempted another flight, but the idea was 
at work in his mind as shown in the following 
page which he wrote. *^Was in swimming, swam 
out pretty far. Suddenly a shark grabbed my leg 
and pulled me out to sea. Was unconscious for a 
while, and woke up in the shark's cave in the mid- 
dle of the ocean somewhere. I talked with him 
a long time jollying him along. He said I was 
a pretty good fellow and too skinny to eat so he 
would let me go. I asked him how I was to get 
away, and he said I would have to swim for it. 
So I was just about to dive into the water from a 
rock when I was awakened. ' ' 

Although he called this a dream it was merely 
thoughts he had written down to answer my de- 
mand. ^'To swim for it,'' was the same as to 
run away in his mind. There was no danger of 
his attempting that, his life was not a pleasant 
one for him just then. He would undoubtedly find 
a way of escaping it, but not by running, the 
alternative would be illness which he might feign 
or which he might actually accomplish. He had at 
times complained of hay fever, which brought in- 
flamed eyes and running nose with frequent sneez- 
ing and the symptoms were beginning again. Un- 
known to the boy, I had made arrangements for 

214 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

him to go the next day with his nurse to a country 
place with a good trout stream. When the next 
visit was due he did not come, and the nurse 
telephoned that *'the boy's stomach is upset.'' I 
went to him, found him in bed, refusing food, 
only an orange for breakfast. He appeared very 
dull and sleepy, temperature of 101 °. There were 
some rales in the right lung. The nurse was out, 
boy was alone. 

^^Wake up," I said, *^I had expected to send 
you away today." 

He opened his eyes. ^^Well, the sooner, the bet- 
ter; where am I going?" 

I explained. 

He lost interest. ^*To the country! Nothing 
to do there, who wants to fish? I don't." His 
eyes closed again, the nurse returned. I went into 
the adjoining room to watch. The nurse stood by 
the bedside. ^'I thought you would be up and 
dressed; how can we make the 2:15 train out of 
town?" No answer from the boy, and when the 
nurse moved him, no response. ^^Well, you have 
suddenly turned into a boy of wood. What is it 
you do not like?" No answer from the boy, but 
he heard the footsteps of the retreating nurse, 
opened his eyes and made all manner of faces at 
him — ^putting out his tongue, thumb to his nose. 

That muscle movement afforded some satisfac- 
tion ; that was the moment to get an answer. * ^ Get 
up now and dress, I am going to take you to a 

215 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 

very nice place where you will be taken care of, 
lots of good things to eat, and yon will soon feel 
fine." The answer came promptly, *'What good 
will it do f ^ ^ Well, I am going to try you and see 
what good it will do. ' ' He was up in a minute, and 
in an hour was comfortably lying in a dainty white 
bed in a pretty private room of a hospital, a sweet- 
faced nurse smiling at him. * ^ Gee, I wish mother 
could see me now, she never believes me when I 
tell her I am sick." Wise mother, she knew him. 
He was not sick now, although his temperature 
had risen to 103. The next morning it was normal 
and remained so, but he was being treated for 
pneumonia, the rales continued. He smiled at me. 
'^I have a nice nurse," he said. Just then a fire 
engine went clanging down the street, he sprang 
up and watched it. The next day he asked for 
fruit, and magazines, watched the fire engines, 
employed his muscles in throwing newspapers, 
and everything throwable, in the corner. Looked 
very happy and contented, no temperature, but 
rales continued for two weeks. The doctor 
jokingly said, ''See if you can dry up those rales 
as quickly as you dropped his temperature." I 
answered, ''I will," and then said to the boy, 
*' Just as soon as you are well I am going to take 
you to Atlantic City." He beamed. ''I have 
never been there and always wanted to go. Now 
I have something to get well for. ' ' The next day 
the doctor telephoned — "I do not know how that 

216 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

boy has managed it, but the rales have all cleared 
up, there is no sound of them. You could take 
him away tomorrow if you want to.'' He was 
pretty weak from the confinement, and as soon as 
the auto started he began sneezing, blowing his 
nose, with very red eyes. It was a day's ride, and 
an hour before the end of it his ^^hay fever" 
stopped. The next morning he told me a genuine 
dream : 

''/ was fishing with father. We came to a 
mountain, went down the mountain in an auto- 
mobile with a lake full of muskrats. They came 
towards me, I tried to get away from them, they 
chased after me, I hit them with my hands. I felt 
one of the horrible things against my face — ugh, 
it was so cold and wet/' 

In ^^ fishing with father" the boy identified him- 
self with his father, and when he comes to diffi- 
culties (mountain) he is not able to overcome 
them. Father has much money to spend and the 
boy's craving for money shows how weak he is. 
He gets in trouble (the lake) and is pursued by 
low-bred wishes (muskrats). They pursue him 
and he feels the horror against his hand — in self- 
abuse — and against his face — his cheek and dis- 
honesty. The muskrats symbolize the low form of 
life he descended to in trying to get away and go- 
ing so fast. The muskrats were very helpful to 
him, when temptations came we reminded him of 
the muskrats chasing him. He agreed that he did 

217 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

feel that he was being chased by something and 
felt that he would like to get as far away as pos- 
sible. The low-bred thoughts in the form of musk- 
rats made a deeper impression than any previous 
pictures from his unconscious. He gradually saw 
that to get away from them he would have to do 
some higher thinking, and concluded to go to 
school and behave himself as other boys, so that 
he could fill a superior position when he began 
to work. He often begged to be allowed to begin 
working for his living — the romantic dream of 
youth, and the boy began to see that the way to get 
away from childhood was not by running but by 
letting time leave it behind. He was not anxious 
to go to school but saw it as a necessity. 

We selected a large school with plenty of space 
to roam in and he began quite full of enthusiasm. 
Daily letters showed he was struggling with home- 
sickness, and the difficulty he was having in ad- 
justing himself to the rules and regulations of 
school discipline. His letters were full of wants, 
mostly for money, and praises of the school. 
Some letters were written in a very regular hand, 
others very scrawling and unformed, showing ex- 
actly how his moods changed, from wild and rest- 
less to more comfortable. He rode every day for 
two hours, which was a great help, he groomed 
his horse and was in constant motion, but wrestled 
so much with his room-mate that he had to room 
alone. There were no dreams. He began to feel 

218 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

tired of his school, complained that he was out of 
everything as he was not heavy enough for ath- 
letics. Just then the wave of influenza passed 
over the country. A few boys in the school of 
nearly five hundred had it. The school was closed, 
most of the boys went home, the boy's father con- 
cluded to leave him at school and wrote him rather 
a severe letter for not controlling his restlessness. 
He wrote me and said, ^^Had a letter from Dad 
which nearly knocked me out.*' The next morn- 
ing a telegram from the school announced: ^'J. 
has a mild case of Influenza." A visit to the 
school showed a temperature of 103. The various 
members of his family were advised to send tele- 
grams and letters of sympathy to him. I wanted 
to watch the effect on him. His temperature fell 
to 101 and then to normal two days from the 
receipt of the telegrams. After the holidays, 
which were spent with his family, he lost the 
hardy colour in his face. Whether it was the 
Southern climate of his home, or being too close 
to mother, which aroused his unconscious baby 
desire, I was not sure. A rosy-faced boy had said 
good-bye, and a pale-faced boy returned. Riding 
was not allowed by the school authorities in Janu- 
ary and February, as they feared his horse might 
slip and fall on the ice. The boy wrote that many 
boys were leaving and he wanted to go too, that 
the school was too large, he was not popular with 
the boys, no one noticed him. His type of muscle 

219 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

craving was not shared by the other boys, they did 
not want to be forever wrestling, twisting and 
climbing. He began to criticize the school, but 
most of the boys were loyal to it. 

I decided to remove him to a smaller school 
where he would have more personal supervision 
and the energy escaping through his muscle-play 
would have to be put in his school work. He was 
so much improved I knew the running away had 
stopped, and while the confinement of the small 
school would be hard for him at first, he needed it. 
When I told him he could change schools he was 
delighted, but after a week at the smaller school 
he was again ill, and had to be sent to a hospital 
for a certain form of indigestion. He begged to 
be allowed to work, he could never go back to that 
school. It took three weeks to get him into shape 
to go back to school again. In this struggle the 
following dream was of great assistance: "'/ was 
floating through the air, every time I landed I came 
down very easily and was not hurt amy, then I 
would rise again and fly through space and doum 
I would come to eartli hut ivas never Imrt/' His 
unconscious told me that we had better make the 
terra firma more attractive so he would stay on 
it. The next vacation he spent with only one 
parent who was instructed to let the boy go day 
and night without any guidance, just to see what 
he would do. I felt very positive that the boy 
had had enough analysis to be very sane and mod- 

220 



MUSCLE EROTISM 

erate. He had talked so calmly and sensibly as 
only a very well-balanced mind could do, I was 
sure he could be trusted for ten days. 

He returned from that vacation with a new 
look on his face, a look of peace, all smiles. The 
drawn features, drooping, sensitive mouth had 
disappeared, he was still a lively, mischievous boy, 
but only normally so. Track work used his mus- 
cles, but his energy had found a new outlet. He 
had discovered that girls are very pretty and re- 
markable creatures and that dancing is a delight- 
ful pastime. The life he was running to find, like 
the bluebird, was right beside him. 

The muscle erotic is a case where the mating or 
reproductive function has not developed out of its 
presexual stage, and where it is still contained 
in the infantile form of motor impulses. It is not 
a matter of wilful repression of developed sex- 
uality in the muscles, but a stop in the develop- 
ment of the vital energy on its way to the sexual 
function. 



221 



CHAPTER XI 

THE TYEANT CHILD 

If a wild, untrained animal were suddenly en- 
dowed with an intellect, lie would possess reason- 
ing power, and, as he is governed by fear, would 
think something like this ; ' ^ If I make a great 
noise, howl and roar, every one either will be 
afraid of me and run away and I will get what 
I want, or they will stay and get me what I want. ' ' 
If time and opportunity have afforded this animal 
an education, which, as the etymology of the word 
implies, has drawn out and unfolded the powers 
of the mind by imparting knowledge and by or- 
derly arrangement of the ideas introduced, he will 
then realize that, sometimes at least, even when 
he howls and roars he does not get what he wants. 
A superior force can frequently make it very 
uncomfortable for him. 

A child follows much the same line of reason- 
ing, when his wants are not supplied, and at a 
very early age his instinct untamed by an un- 
folded intellect sends forth the cry for what he 
wants. As he grows and his experience accumu- 
lates, he learns that certain wants are forbidden 
and will not be supplied. If he has an over- 
indulgent friend or relative who relaxes disci- 

222 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

pline, if illness forces the parents to become in- 
dulgent, or if lie sees another child having the 
forbidden want supplied, then the little human 
animal will use his reasoning power to create the 
condition which will necessitate the supplying of 
the forbidden want. He may either feign or pro- 
long illness, coax the indulgent relative, or he 
may learn from another child his method of at- 
taining success. 

This means of obtaining satisfaction of the de- 
sire for power is not entirely confined to children. 
The adult invalid is too often a child of larger 
growth, the convenient headache, fatigue or vari- 
ous aches and pains, though unconsciously used, 
are often a defence against unpleasant demands. 
Both tyrannical child and invalid adopt a certain 
line of action, in order to become master of the sit- 
uation. They frequently look upon themselves as 
victims, because the tyranny which uses weak- 
ness as a mecms never can find it satisfying as a 
condition. Sometimes the child is fully aware 
that the tyrannical act is used as a defence or 
compensation. *^I will make her cry for it,'' I 
heard a fifteen-year-old girl say, when her ap- 
parently very firm and wise mother insisted upon 
more modest dress and sensible heels. The girl 
had found that, by showing resentment, by living 
apart from the family circle during the day and 
not speaking, she could make her mother suffer 
and even cause her to shed tears. 

223 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHHjD 



THE HAND OF THE TYEANT 

Another case of tyranny in an eleven-year-old 
girl managing her mother was a girl with an ap- 
parently paralysed left hand, which she refused to 
use. She was an only child, fat, over-grown and 
indolent. Her father was a working-man. Her 
mother had indulged the girl in every possible 
way, until she was very weak in character. She 
dressed and undressed her daughter, arranged 
her hair and cooked all meals to suit her special 
taste. At ten years of age the doctors had treated 
her for a cold and advised the removal of adenoids 
and tonsils. The operation was performed in a 
hospital, and the girl spent the following night 
there. It was the first time she had ever suffered 
pain or met a situation where she was not 
** babied" by the indulgent mother. After the 
operation the doctors and nurses did not notice 
anything unusual about the patient, and the pa- 
tient declared after the operation the nurse had 
*^ walked" her to the bathroom. But when the 
mother came in the afternoon to take the girl 
home, it was found she did not move her left side. 
Arm and leg seemed paralysed. The patient was 
moved home after a few days, and the left foot 
and leg soon regained normal activity. The arm 
also was moved freely but not the hand. She 
doubled up her left elbow, and kept the folded 

224 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

hand on her chest, the fingers tightly closed. As 
she talked with me, she laid the closed left hand 
in her lap, pulled open the fingers, caressing them, 
and playing with them as if with a doll. I took 
her mind off her hand and engaged her in con- 
versation about a circus, describing the trained 
animals. As she became interested, she opened 
and moved her left hand. It looked relaxed and 
natural. At other times it looked rigid and 
strained. 

At the fourth visit I gave her a box of building 
blocks, formed so as to be dove-tailed together 
and requiring two strong hands to unite them. I 
first built a bridge with them. Then I suddenly 
remembered an important letter I had to write, 
and left her seated with the blocks on the floor 
in the farther corner of the room. She worked 
with one hand for a while, but, as she became 
more interested, the left hand opened and worked 
with the right. I called her attention to this fact 
and spoke in flattering terms. *^Yes,'' she said, 
* ' sometimes it opens, but I have to move it three 
times, like this.'' She made a pawing motion. 
I took the left hand in mine. Instantly it closed, 
or she closed it, and could not be induced to open 
it again. I could not possibly pry her fingers 
open, without using such force as to break them. 
They seemed made of iron. 

, Opposition arouses opposition but does not re- 
move its cause, so we must work to arouse the 

225 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 

desire in the patient. This girl was fond of 
playing cook. She was told how to cook her 
father's supper consisting of fried eggs and 
mashed potatoes. She was very fond of her 
father and very anxious to prepare his supper, 
but she needed two hands to peel and mash the 
potatoes and break the eggs for frying. The 
mother was instructed to keep out of the kitchen, 
but to peep in occasionally and see what was hap- 
pening. The girl was using both hands in peeling 
and mashing the potatoes and in cooking the eggs, 
although the left one, from not being used as much 
as the right one, was working awkwardly and 
weakly. She became quite excited at this first 
cooking adventure, and ordered her mother to set 
the table, but cut the bread and put the finishing 
touches on the meal herself. When she cooked 
or did anything else for her father, she used her 
two hands, but would never do so for her mother, 
refusing to make her bed, dust the furniture or 
dress herself. She thus showed a strong father 
complex, a topic which is discussed in another 
chapter. 

Most interesting were the unconscious thoughts 
brought out in the analysis. In her dreams she 
was a princess and in her left hand she held a 
beautiful golden sceptre such as she had seen in 
a moving picture ; or she was a teacher in school, 
holding a pointer in her left hand and telling the 
class that when she moved the pointer, they were 

226 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

to change from one side of the room to the other, 
all excepting the history class, which must sit still. 
This was interpreted to mean that she did not 
want the course of her own personal history to 
change. Unconsciously she wanted to reserve her 
left hand to command others and point out what 
they were to do, but not to do anything with 
herself. 

After a few months of analysis a new environ- 
ment was selected with a cousin living in the 
country among the mountains, where there was 
rough, uneven walking, and where mountain 
climbing sometimes needed the use of two hands. 
In the unconscious thoughts brought out in the 
analysis, the girl had seen that she must conquer 
her desire to be wilful and babyish, which she 
evidently was in using her left hand to tyrannize 
over her mother, and then her left hand would 
want to work with her right. She went to the 
mountains, unaccompanied on the train and full 
of good resolutions to try her best to grow up and 
be a fine young woman of whom her father would 
be proud. She remained there five months, using 
both her hands all the time (the left improving 
in efficiency even to the extent of allowing her to 
row a boat), but when she returned to her mother 
and former playmates, the old temptations re- 
appeared, partly, in her mother's treatment, 
partly in the shut-in conditions surrounding a 
child in her own home. A little more help from 

227 



THE PECBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

further analysis was needed to start this girl 
again in different habits of thought, after which 
she finally abandoned her wish to be continually 
a child. 

ILLNESS AS TYEANNY 

The wish to tyrannize is often an unconscious 
one. Nervous invalids usually think they would 
give or do anything to be well, but they really 
want health to come from the outside rather than 
from within themselves. Frequently a certain 
amount of self-sacrifice is needed to regain health, 
as indeed health and happiness come through the 
sacrifice which self-control requires. A recent 
issue of a medical magazine contains an article 
entitled ^'Self-Denial is Eare!" Who has not, 
after an illness, felt a certain disappointment in 
leaving the sick room, where one has received 
visitors and had meals on a dainty tray, and in 
joining the family group where one does not re- 
ceive special attention? ''The average human be- 
ing does not want to live hygienically ! ' ^ exclaims 
the editor, and he backs up his assertion with the 
following taken from a physician 's notes : ' ' Once 
we published an account of a case of diabetes we 
had treated with some success. A distinguished 
army officer read it and as a consequence called 
upon us. We began to explain the regimen neces- 
sary, when he interrupted to say: 'I don't want 

228 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

any diet. I want you to give me a treatment that 
will allow me to eat anything I want in any quan- 
tity!' We resigned. 

**Mr. Man doesn't want to stop drinking or 
smoking or working or playing too much. What 
he wants of us is the means to keep on as he has 
been living. Madam does not relish our advice 
to cut down her bridge, loosen her corsets and 
quit gorging. She wants medicine to restore her 
youth, take off her fat, and enable her to keep it 
up until she has had enough. 

**They all come to us, not for reform, but to be 
enabled to go on sinning." 

In such cases it is putting it crudely merely 
to say that human nature is selfish, living only 
for its own gratifications. That way of saying 
it does not bring about the results of changing the 
selfishness. It is an everyday experience that 
our acts are not on a level with our reasoning. 
Hence we are not fully adapted to the conditions 
of life. We do not suspect that we have not re- 
linquished certain childish reactions to life, that 
we are carrying in the background certain in- 
fantile illusions, of which we are conscious only 
when we catch fleeting thoughts of unfulfilled 
wishes; and we seek relief from our lack of 
adaptation to our surroundings, by games and 
self-indulgence, playing the tyrant with ourselves, 
by living as far as possible without restrictions 
or rules. 

229 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

EEGKESSION 

In psychoanalytic treatment a patient learns to 
observe the fleeting thoughts, whether in phanta- 
sies of the day or in those of the night which we 
call dreams. In these thoughts we get glimpses of 
the unconscious which contains the cause of the 
lack of adaptation. With the libido theory we can 
easily explain the tyrannical character of the wish 
of the patient with the paralysed hand. Just at 
the age when the child had begun definitely to 
decide on certain actions upon which to direct her 
libido, her mother interfered. As a child at the 
seashore in attempting to fill its pail with sand is 
sometimes interfered with by mother or nurse, 
who hovers over the child and cannot let it act 
itself, so the mother of this patient foresaw each 
childish purpose and in more senses than one, 
always filled her sand pail for her, time and 
again dri\dng back the increasing libido until it 
flowed back into its infantile paths. This causes 
what is known as a regression of the libido. 

Of course the mother herself was still partly or 
wholly living in her own childhood in making a 
doll out of her child. By treating the girl as an 
infant the mother prolonged her own sense of 
power to the mental injury of the girl. We may 
say that the wish to tyrannize arises from the 
regression of the libido to infantile paths and that 
because of such regression the mode of adapta- 

230 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

tion to life will be infantile. On this plan the 
individual expects to find in the world of external 
reality the same friendly reception from every 
one as from its parents, and to obtain with no 
trouble an easy success. When an obstacle is en- 
countered such an individual shrinks back rather 
than pushes ahead to overcome, and this attitude 
is generally caused by the child within the indi- 
vidual making up its mind to let the parent go on 
and fill its sand pail. In this simile the sand pail 
is the world work demanded of the child and now 
the child virtually says to the world which it finds 
in the place of its mother: ^^All right, you in- 
sisted on filling my sand pail for me when I 
wanted to do it myself. Now you want me to do 
it, you can go on filling it yourself and you'll get 
a disappointment equal to mine when you 
wouldn't let me.'' It makes no difference with 
such people that the world is not the mother, the 
child behaves to both the same, unconsciously, be- 
cause its disposition toward things not itself was 
crystallized in early life. The process of gradual 
spiritual weaning from the home, represented by 
the mother, should be begun even before the first 
sand pail and shovel, or the mother-infant atti- 
tude will be maintained in spite of any conscious 
desire that may later come to terminate it. No 
matter how strong the conscious wish, the uncon- 
scious is stronger simply because unknown. 
If possible, the obstacles in the way of the child 
231 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

are removed by Mni with childish methods. *'I 
will kill you, ' ' says the small boy when you inter- 
fere with his pleasure. The emperor Nero fur- 
nishes a colossal example of this infantile method 
of control of surroundings. His libido was 
blocked and regressed, due to the managing and 
dictatorial tendencies of his mother, until it 
reached the primitive condition of a savage with 
unlimited cruelty, in which he murdered his own 
mother. Nero solved his problems in an infantile 
manner. Not from his own efforts but from the 
efforts of his ambitious mother came his wish to 
be an emperor. Completely astray as to his moral 
qualities he never realized his own weakness. 
When he wanted to enjoy a bonfire he burned a 
city. 

INSUBORDINATION 

Insubordination of children becomes permanent 
by continuous restriction and obstinacy of par- 
ents. The insubordinate child is inwardly ask- 
ing for training and guidance. He is craving to 
be understood. Punishments and corrections, in- 
stead of helping him, have the effect of hemming 
in his stream of life. With all the power he owns 
he revolts against that treatment and, in effect, he 
says, **Show me the way by encouragement, by 
love and sympathy; let me know only when I do 
right." That is what the farmer does when in 
cultivating his plants he loosens the soil for the 

232 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

Kfe-giving air and rain to reach the vital parts of 
their being — their roots. Like the roots of the 
plants which grow only in the dark, our uncon- 
scious needs a special treatment and it is only- 
through analysis that the roots of the soul can be 
examined and their special needs learned. 

The incorrigible child is never understood, and, 
as this lack of understanding produces a very 
serious lack of adjustment between himself and 
his surroundings, he gradually loses all confidence 
in them. He first loses confidence in his father, 
and thereafter will treat all men as if they merited 
no more confidence than his father. This mal- 
adjustment of the child to his surroundings is 
actually the fault of the parents only, and is due 
to the fact that he is rewarded for being incor- 
rigible. For this he is given the only reward that 
a child desires, which is the personal attention of 
the other people. Only when he is naughty is his 
personality considered. Only if he is sick does he 
get attention. This is specially true of the young- 
est child. By laziness also, and by opposition to 
things that are asked of him he can obtain power 
over people to the extent of forcing them to con- 
sider and take an interest in him. 

It is indispensable, although most uncommon, 
for parents to know the child's reactions to his 
surroundings, particularly to authority. In the 
kind of investigations pursued in psychoanalysis 
we discover more and more every day the danger 

233 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBJLD 

of sending home a cliild we may have taken out of 
Ms home and cured. We have succeeded in free- 
ing his libido so that health returns through a 
change of attitude toward life sufficiently to meet 
its normal demands. If we send such a child 
home, we send him into the same conditions which 
caused his illness, conditions due only to the ac- 
tions of the family. Of course the parents do not 
realize, any more than the child, the necessity 
which confronts adults of a complete change in 
attitude toward the world, from the infant atti- 
tude, to the adult attitude, without which he will 
through physical growth cease to be a child but 
through lack of spiritual growth he will never 
completely become an adult. 

The young child does not yet suffer from his 
inability to cross the bridge into manhood in the 
same way and to the same degree that adults 
suffer from their infantile reactions to life, when 
they expect the same sympathetic understanding 
from the world that they received from their 
parents. On the contrary, the child is still in the 
happy state where he can put all the blame on 
adults and what seems to him their foolish ideas. 
The incorrigible child plays a certain proud part 
among his comrades and feels himself a hero, just 
because of his improper attitude of laziness and 
impudence in his own little world. Lazy children 
want to be at the top without any effort of climb- 
ing, and feel no need to abandon their own ways. 

234 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

The neurotic adult, however, does see the neces- 
sity of abandoning or relinquishing his old pleas- 
ures, but he is usually unable to do so without aid. 
Rather than work, the young patient would keep 
his habits and his dreams of being a hero, and he 
feels that advice and correction are the hardships 
of fate. 

PABENTS AS SIGNBOAEDS 

After the analysis the adolescent's unconscious 
is laid bare before him. He sees what an unlovely 
personality his is, what truly disgusting ideals are 
making him feel like a hero. In the past the boy 
has admired his father and wished to imitate him. 
Outwardly he has tried to imitate him in detail, 
or has envied him, when seeing what appears to 
the child to be the freedom of action and abso- 
lute right to the mother. The father takes her 
away for trips and leaves the child at home. He 
exacts proper conduct of the child which he does 
not maintain himself, just as the signboard on the 
road points the way for other people but does not 
have to go itself. The realization of the great dif- 
ference between himself and his father, not merely 
in physical strength but in power of every kind 
weighs heavily upon him. *^I am immersed in 
deep darkness,'' says the child, *^my father is 
standing way up like a bright light, so far above 
me I see no way to reach him except through 
mother." It frequently happens that the boy's 

235 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHILD 

longing to appropriate Ms mother fills him with 
jealousy of his father, or he condemns her for 
coldness when she does not devote herself excln- 
sively to him. He longs for a mother who will 
lift him up and push him on to overcome the 
obstacles. "When the boy finds that his fight for 
the possession of the mother and his imitation of 
the brilliant qualities of his father remain with- 
out results, he seeks in his own phantasies the 
feeling of power and a sense of his value. If he is 
a lazy boy he can become a clown of the 
school and thus can transform his weakness into 
power. 



STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS 

Through analysis the boy recognizes the 
reasons for wishing to transform his weakness 
into power. He also recognizes that in work he 
has a new source from which to derive satisfac- 
tion. The analyst must temper the wind to the 
shorn lamb, and learn how strong a pressure is 
necessary to free the blocked libido and how much 
of it the child can stand at once. The child who 
uses his weakness as a source of power does so 
by coaxing his parents. This indirect means of 
overcoming parental opposition must be con- 
quered by the analyst in arousing new motives, as 
the parents who have allowed themselves to be 
coaxed have shown that they are themselves un- 

236 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

able to create the proper incentive in their chil- 
dren. A child must not be allowed to conquer by 
his methods of weakness, a victory which all 
parents know is unfortunate for both conqueror 
and conquered. The victory of weakness in- 
creases, paradoxically enough, the strength of the 
weakness. It puts a premium on weakness itself, 
for through weakness the individual exerts a 
strong power over the persons of his environ- 
ment. But we have not realized until today that 
the child adopts that method only because the 
natural way has been obstructed at some time dur- 
ing its growth. Therefore, a new education must 
take place so that the neurotic child can resume 
the original line of development at the point 
where it was arrested. Without this new style of 
education he can never break his old habits. It is 
exceedingly difficult for the child to begin this 
reconstruction and for parents not to spoil the 
whole fabric of the past. 

Frequently a child is called incorrigible because 
he refuses to meet demands which are really not 
necessary, and refuses to avoid doing that which is 
useless for parents to forbid merely to gratify 
their sense of power. Frequently parents forbid 
when there is no sense in forbidding. Natural 
freedom of movement is inhibited by such a pro- 
cedure, and rational action is obstructed by the 
parents ' fanciful will. By such means dangerous, 
destructive elements are introduced into the 

237 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEBVOtTS CHH^D 

child's psyche, against which the instinct for self- 
defence has to revolt. We may call such a child 
tyrannical, but who are the real tyrants'? Chil- 
dren often know better than adults what they 
need, while by an abrupt and injudicious inter- 
ference, their course of education and develop- 
ment, prescribed by their own nature, is dis- 
turbed. That does not mean to say that one 
should yield to them in every way ; it only means 
that we should be cautious and parsimonious in 
correcting them. There are times when we must 
be unyielding. The child recognizes the undisci- 
plined will of adults, not only in the unnecessary 
prohibitions but also in the unjustified permis- 
sions. As a matter of fact, adults, through ca- 
priciousness and laziness, yield to their own un- 
justified inclinations in that they prefer what is 
pleasant, but sternly reprove their children for 
doing the same thing. Human beings in their in- 
tellectual development have, on the one hand, a 
fear for the requirements of life; on the other, 
they are forced to fight for their own preserva- 
tion and that of the race. The child tries to main- 
tain itself by its own methods which are very in- 
appropriate, being a mixture of childish inexperi- 
ence and of good and bad manners, copied from 
adults. So in his neurotic formula of reaction the 
child adopts a modus vivendi which is more or less 
of a compromise between his love for parents, 
brothers and sisters, and the aggressive and de- 

238 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

fensive fight carried through for his own exist- 
ence. 

FATHER AS MODEL. 

As an illustration of the difficulties a child meets 
with in the home surroundings, I will describe the 
case of a fourteen-year-old boy having an attrac- 
tive personality and the usual intellectual endow- 
ment. He had grown up under circumstances 
judged favourable by the world of current opin- 
ion. His father was an energetic and intelligent 
man with a successful business career, the mother 
soft and amiable. Both have manifold interests 
and are highly gifted. The great proficiency of 
the father, as very frequently happens, was united 
with a very high opinion of himself, occasionally 
with a want of consideration, and at such times 
he felt himself very superior, but the self-confi- 
dence had not such a sound foundation as ap- 
peared on the surface and covered a clever uncer- 
tainty. The mother was absolutely submissive to 
his intelligence and decision, but a certain sadness 
in her eyes betrayed a wish to rebel if she only 
dared to do so. 

The son born of these parents grew up among 
the older brothers and sisters, sometimes with 
much petting. This the father saw, but consid- 
ered it a weakening influence and used too strict 
and harsh measures as an antidote. Very early 
demands were made upon the child which could 

239 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 

hardly be answered by any child of his age. Since 
the boy, as every boy does, wanted to be similar 
to the father, he tried as far as possible to meet 
his expectations, but they were above the boy's 
power. He tried to show ability by using the 
same means he saw his father nse, being exceed- 
ingly neat and well-groomed, wearing well-made 
clothes and imitating his father's manners. The 
attempts were naturally very poor, as he conld not 
yet do the things which were possible for his 
father. Continual failures discouraged the boy. 
He worried about them. Instead of quietly di- 
recting the boy's attention to his errors and edu- 
cating him gradually to his own individuality, the 
father, owing to his own despotic tendencies 
caused by his superficial thinking, recognized the 
boy's efforts as mere silliness and became angry, 
blaming the son, but puffed himself up as being a 
model and very superior, — ^whereupon the boy re- 
doubled his efforts to be the same as the father. 
He was told it was up to him to become this very 
perfect boy his father wished. His mother ap- 
parently agreed with his father so even with her 
the boy had had no opportunity quietly to develop 
his own personality and natural tendencies. 

We are not surprised to see this boy failing 
more and more in school, although he is diligent 
and not without mental endowment. In the school 
he reacts in the same way as at home. He works 
not because it is his duty, because he wants to be 

240 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

instructed and because he is anxious to increase 
Ms knowledge and thereby gain greater power 
and more pleasure in life, but his entire aim is 
to acquire qualities like his father's and to create 
the impression that he is shrewd, energetic, intelli- 
gent and efficient. He constantly feels that he will 
not be able to succeed. Naturally, he uses his 
powers at school as he does at home, and with the 
same unsatisfactory results. The more he follows 
this inefficient method the more he arouses dis- 
satisfaction in others. Gradually he loses all 
courage. Complaint after complaint comes from 
school; he fails in his examinations, is not pro- 
moted, and the familiar ^* school misery' ' is the 
final result. 

In cases such as this both teachers and parents 
are confronted with a serious problem, which 
would be solved if the parents and teachers were 
interested enough to learn the child's formula of 
reaction. In this case the reaction formula is 
that he is using his abilities only for a game of 
imitation. His natural gifts do not become ap- 
parent, and so subject to intelligent cultivation, 
because he has been scolded and punished. He 
has never been educated in such a way as to *4ead 
forth" the appropriate use of his own particular 
qualities. For the requirements imposed upon 
him individually he feels only fear, being in- 
wardly convinced that he cannot meet them, which 
indeed he really cannot, because they are misfit 

241 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

requirements. They are as unreasonable as 
would be the use of a race horse to pull a truck, 
or a dray horse to run in a race. 

As a concrete example of the impossible de- 
mands made upon children we might take the pro- 
pounding, quite common among parents, of ques- 
tions or mathematical problems with a view to 
*' testing" the child. These questions and prob- 
lems are deterrent not alone because of their in- 
herent difficulty. Sometimes they are essentially 
quite simple but contain a verbal catch, designed 
to trip up the child and lead him to make a mis- 
take which it is quite likely his inexperience of 
the world will prevent him from seeing. Some- 
times they are asked with the conscious purpose 
of making the child uncomfortable but in all these 
instances these questions are impossible because 
they are not real questions implying an ability on 
the part of the child to answer them. Indeed the 
child at once sees in most instances that they 
imply an inability on his part to answer them, and 
he instinctively feels that the adult asking them is 
gaining some sort of satisfaction from his dis- 
comfiture. If parents or teachers would but con- 
sider how extraordinary, not to say uncanny, a 
full adult response to some of these questions 
would appear to them, they would at once see the 
unreasonableness of such questions, and would 
realize that the asking of them is a thoughtless 
act on their part, for it is frequently a situation 

242 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

unnecessarily created by the adult to show his 
superiority to the child. 



FEELING OF INFEEIORITY 

A psychoanalysis shows the cause of the boy's 
reaction to this kind of demand, but it expects the 
parents' co-operation in overcoming anxiety on 
the part of the child. This is accomplished 
largely by removing the obstructions which block 
the life stream so that the feeling of inferiority 
disappears, to be replaced by confidence. Then 
only will the child's energy be utilized in his work, 
in fulfilling his duty and in complying with life's 
demands. Adults seek many ways of compensat- 
ing for, or setting up a defence against, this feel- 
ing of inferiority. They magnify whatever suc- 
cess they may have had and refuse to accept criti- 
cism for their deficiencies ; they become sensitive 
and touchy. 

Here lies one of the greatest difficulties of edu- 
cation, whether domestic or academic. The nerv- 
ous child is by disposition sensitive and touchy. 
He has an especially keen discernment for all 
sorts of things, a very fine discriminative sense. 
Things seem different to him when they seem 
the same to others not so sensitive. And he has 
a very keen eye for the weak spots of his teachers 
and parents. Such a child with so sensitive a 
nature is like a very delicate scientific instrument 

243 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

of precision, and is really designed for very high 
uses. In every nervous child lies the germ of a 
nature finer than that of the ordinary healthy 
individual. He is looking always for other 
humans finely enough constituted to give him di- 
rections or example to follow, for men and women 
to whom he may transfer entirely his ideal, 
his unconscious aim. Children are very quick to 
perceive whether the teachers and parents are 
serving their own interests or the children's. 
Since parents are not more perfect than other 
human beings, they may, with the very best in- 
tentions, be deceived about their innermost mo- 
tives and not realize how much of their own 
egotism is finding satisfaction in their relations 
with their children. 

It is very important for those who have the care 
and training of nervous children or of adults to 
have a thorough, analytic self-knowledge, because 
without it, the children's complexes are brought 
to life by the complexes of the adults having 
charge of them. This constant resuscitation of 
unhappy feelings renders almost impossible a 
completely satisfactory work on the part of the 
analyst. Therefore, any special training directed 
by analysis must aim with the greatest patience to 
represent the demands of life in a most attractive 
form without annoyance or hatred. From the 
psychoanalytic point of view, laziness, disobedi- 
ence, silliness and other childish traits are not 

244 



THE TYRANT CHILD 

considered punishable faults. They are not the 
actions of personal offence or revenge on the part 
of a vulgar soul. The analyst asks why a human 
being behaves in this or that unsuitable way, what 
he expects to gain by it, what are the unconscious 
wishes at the basis of the distorted form in which 
conscious wishes are expressed, in other words, 
what is the reaction formula which is hiding be- 
hind the overt actions. The wild and erroneous 
statements of children are to be understood then 
as symptoms. The trials of many parents would 
be greatly lessened if they could be made to un- 
derstand this very important fact, and that every 
capricious and silly act of a child may have as an 
underlying cause a complex which psychoanalytic 
investigation can remove. Every child has in him 
a something which wants to grow. If it is not 
allowed to grow at all, or if it is not developed in 
a balanced way, it will break out in innumerable 
other ways, the child's character will be de- 
formed, and will be dwarfed in the very char- 
acteristics where it ought to have its fullest 
growth. 



245 



CHAPTER XII 

TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

"Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who hath it." 
— Peoveebs. 

This difficult question of guiding the childish mind 
through the mazes of temptation will be less prob- 
lematical if in teaching our children we are not too 
much led by our own whims, prejudices or nerves, 
if we do not think superficially only and so accept 
the ideas of right and wrong as taught us by our 
parents. We should, on the contrary, understand 
the law of cause and effect, as revealed by the con- 
stant urge from the conflict of the conscious and 
unconscious. To the undeveloped mind ^*I want 
if is a sufficient reason for getting it, without 
any sense of justice or of law and order. 

This difference between the child and the adult 
mind is quite clear to the adult, but to children 
whose universal infantile experience has been to 
cry for a thing until they get it, or exhaust them- 
selves with crying, the discrepancy between **I 
want if and **I have if is so great that it is 
unendurable, and all children who have a desire 
for anything, are abnormal if they do not cry or 
fight till they either do not want it or get it. 
This fact enables us to divide children into two 

246 



TEACHING OF RIGHT AND WRONG 

classes: (1) those who struggle, with or without 
crying, and, (2) those who do not struggle or cry. 
Parents think the second class is the better and 
indeed it is the easier to live with. But we find 
that really it is the worse, because we have learned 
that while the children of the first type are con- 
cerned with their relations with the external 
world, those of the second withdraw from the 
world into themselves, and at a very early age, 
a process which, if continued, is most detrimental. 

So that when the practical question comes up 
in a direct conflict between the will of the parent 
and that of either the child or any other de- 
pendent, there is great need for care in the adjust- 
ment, or the child and parent will tend to become 
separated, not as they should be, in good feeling, 
but with bad feeling in their hearts. 

Shall the man who has worked all day and 
earned his wages give to the one who, although 
endowed by nature with equal power, has spent 
the day in idle phantasies? Or shall the ^^I want 
it" of the mind that is not built out, not broad- 
ened and not strengthened by education both from 
books and experience, demand the same as he who 
has put forth all his efforts in the struggle to 
acquire an education for more power to express 
his energy? Would that be just! **I want it be- 
cause I want it'^ is the child's unreasoning de- 
mand which must be met in early life with a sense 
of justice on the part of both parent and child. 

247 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 

Wlien a host of admirers stand ready to supply 
the slightest want until the child is overwhelmed, 
what wonder that he throws everything aside in a 
burst of impatience and finds interest in some 
simple thing. I watched a nine months ' baby neg- 
lect entirely the store toys and play a long time 
with a china egg which he had found. 

A young child has a keen sense of justice and 
lively responsiveness. A smile on your face 
brings a smile on his ; and calling forth a smile on 
his face before giving toys is a wise precaution 
against his crying for what he wants. He will 
soon learn to make sounds to attract your atten- 
tion and smile in expectation. * ^ You will give that 
child everything she wants, she will be spoiled,'' 
said a dyspeptic relative. ^'If I were so stupid as 
to wait until my baby cried for what she wants 
before giving it to her, or to give her something 
to silence her because she was crying she would 
indeed be spoiled," answered the calm young 
mother. It is only just to the child to ask for his 
smile; it is all he has to give for the pleasure and 
care from you, but it means so much in later years, 
for the happy smile is the first freeing of the crea- 
tive emotions from the child-soul and should be 
followed by an impulse of energy. Careful ob- 
servation of the child shows that a sudden move- 
ment or spring usually follows a baby's smile, 
demonstrating the release of energy that follows 
the happy emotion (which is literally the moving, 

248 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

out of life). Try the experiment of attracting the 
child to smiles and watch the sudden movement 
following the smile. If the *^I want if of the 
child must be denied, do not leave a vacuum where 
the wish was, but give your sympathy or some 
other substitute so that by distraction the child *s 
mind may be led away from the wish. It should 
not be repressed (wanted just the same but denied 
by force or superior power of authority) but 
should be replaced by other interests. Above all 
things, do not be too lazy to think whether or not 
the reason for denial is necessary, for then the 
child is very quick to see through your mistake 
and a seed is sown for future trouble in the form 
of nervous disorders, negative opinions and ac- 
tions, and dyspeptic relatives for the next genera- 
tion. And do not say *^no,'' and afterwards 
'^yes.'' 

With what stolid indifference we pass by the 
teaching of the Christian dogma in the Old and 
New Testaments. For countless generations the 
lawmakers and teachers gave most earnest 
thought, prayed and yearned, over the right guid- 
ing of the human race. Laws were fashioned 
which they beheved would light the steps of their 
children and children's children to endless gener- 
ations, yet we scarcely read them over. Creeds 
of the past thousands of years have been care- 
fully preserved, for to some men they brought 
peace, self-mastery and power, which promoted 

249 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CBILD 

life. Should we not go a little more slowly and 
examine them before we so freely express our 
notions of right and wrong? This is the begin- 
ning of wisdom for the child, with respect for 
authority and obedience to law. Respect for law 
and obedience to authority show a mind strength- 
ened and well-balanced by a favourable environ- 
ment (not weakened and suffering from oppres- 
sion and fear of might) and are the foundation 
stones of our homes, of society, of our country and 
of peace. It is only through law and order that 
we can enjoy peace. Resistance to authority 
shows a mind weakened by the crushing weight 
of unwise authority and leads to lawlessness and 
a lawless life. A lawless country is doomed. 

Like his body, a child's life is at first very weak 
and can express only a few movements either of 
muscles or of emotional feeling; but as the mind 
grows the body grows. Intelligence is followed 
by the independent action of the body. The his- 
tory of the child and human life is the history of 
the race. As the race learned that what was 
wrong was any form of destruction which would 
ultimately destroy life, so the child must be 
taught to respect life. In ancient times it was be- 
lieved that in order to preserve life, life must be 
given, that the old life must die for the new one 
to live, as we are told in the Bible ^^he that loseth 
his life shall find it," and we have accepted that 
meaning to be a death unto sin and birth into 

250 



TEACHING OF RIGHT AND WRONG 

righteousness, as a symbolic act in the rite of 
baptism. ^'Except ye be born again ye cannot 
enter the Kingdom of Heaven.'' In this sense the 
former self must be sacrificed to the new. In the 
teaching of the Ten Commandments on two tables 
of stone the race was clearly told the rules for 
right and wrong doing. The first five command- 
ments on the table of stone tell us what we must 
do, they are devoted to the worship of the creative 
spirit of life, which we call God, to respect and 
reverence for laws preserving life. In the last 
five any kind of destruction is forbidden. 

VI. ^^Thou Shalt not kill" forbids direct de- 
struction of life and human life is not specified. 

VII. ^'Thou shalt not steal" forbids destruc- 
tion in the command for protection of property. 

VIII. *^Thou shalt not commit adultery" for- 
bids destruction of love without which there can- 
not be life. 

IX. Forbids destruction of honour, and 

X. Forbids covetousness which brings greed, 
envy and the group of destructive emotions. 

The subsequent chapters in Exodus tell of the 
stern necessity of justice, **an eye for an eye," 
and the absolute demand for reparation. **If a 
man steals an ox and kills or sells it he shall 
restore five oxen." 

After the race had developed from the Mosaic 
law through many hundred years, further in- 
struction was given in the wisdom of King Solo- 

251 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

mon. He gave the same admonitions to respect 
authority, warning against temptations, telling 
always of the great need of wisdom, teaching the 
moral virtues and their contrary vices, and the 
value of self-control. * ^ He that is slow to anger is 
better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his 
spirit than he that taketh a city/' These laws 
expressed in the Old Testament are the founda- 
tions of civilization. How wonderful that in the 
few lines of the last ^ve commandments is con- 
densed the entire question of sin, which is de- 
struction in any form. 

It has been argued that in spite of the original 
strong commands not to kill nor to destroy, since 
Biblical times there has always been war with its 
enormous destruction. If we look a little further, 
we see that war has never undermined the founda- 
tions of civilization, for peace and improvement 
of the race have always followed. War is com- 
parable to a faulty superstructure on a firm and 
solid foundation, upon which the race, as soon as 
the lust and excitement have calmed down, again 
starts to rebuild. Then, further, should we not 
examine findings which in the medical world are 
also teaching and proving the necessity for truth? 
Science and religion have been thought to dis- 
, agree and to have a different work to perform. 
But when we search for the etymology and origi- 
nal significance they seem to have a similar mean- 
ing. The teachings of laws to promote a just and 

252 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

peaceful life are found in other religions than the 
Christian. 

A child absorbs much of his knowledge of right 
and wrong from his daily surroundings by copy- 
ing the sayings and conduct of his elders. For 
instance, at a Sunday table several children were 
lunching together. They began an argument 
about some conduct in their school, blaming one of 
the absent schoolmates for starting some mischief. 
The argument became heated, when a little five- 
year-old girl who had been listening very quietly, 
said **Sh! sh! sh! my mother says you must al- 
ways talk about nice things at the table.'' The 
mother did not remember giving such instruction 
in the little girPs presence, but the *^ little 
pitcher*' was always filling up with her mother's 
wisdom and found this an appropriate occasion 
to pour out some of mother's teachings. 

When investigating an untruthful child in an 
analysis, I found the mother, a woman of fine 
social standing, to be in her social life an invet- 
erate teller of white lies. Not for the world would 
she have hurt any one's feelings, so she smiled at 
her hostesses or guests with sweet sayings, but 
in the family circle spoke of her annoyance. She 
had gushingly invited her niece and little grand- 
niece to come and stay through the period of in- 
fantile paralysis, told her niece how delighted she 
would be to have her and little grandniece, how 
she loved babies, and how dear baby Susan was. 

253 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEV0U8 CHH^D 

But after the arrival of niece and grandniece, the 
hostess began confidentially to remark to her 
sister bridge players that baby Susan's toys were 
so disturbing, and baby Susan was never still, 
she was such a chatterbox. Madame 's morning 
nap was always broken by the early rising of baby 
Susan. And, strange to say, this silly, selfish 
woman was sympathized with, and the niece and 
little grandniece were considered as very thought- 
less and inconsiderate. The untruthful child has 
to learn of her mother's untruthfulness, but this 
knowledge can be adjusted by explanation of 
mamma's being too impulsive for her own good, 
and undertaking more than she can accomplish. 

Untruthfulness is most frequently caused by 
fear and timidity, and by repression. If the child 
told the truth, he would be punished and threat- 
ened by the parent. This would inhibit and block 
the outflow of life in the child, a most dangerous 
thing because it frequently causes serious forms 
of nervous troubles, epilepsy, tics and functional 
disturbances. People who demand the truth from 
a child or inferior in a threatening voice deserve 
more contempt and punishment than the untruth- 
ful one. Truth can be elicited from a guilty child 
by sympathy more easily and exactly than it can 
be extracted by fear. No one is born truthful 
or honest. Parents and teachers often make it 
extremely difficult for a child to tell the truth, and 
when we have departed from our ignorant 

254 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

methods of punishment (with their cruel and bar- 
barous ways of demanding the truth) there will be 
more truth and virtue in mankind. 

A child's quick ear heard her mother tell her 
father a new hat had cost ten dollars and then tell 
a visitor that it had cost twenty dollars. The child 
said nothing, but the knowledge that her mother 
was a liar haunted her for years. And later she 
became very untruthful. She married, and after 
the birth of her first child, she was ill with a form 
of nervous trouble diagnosed as Dementia Prae- 
cox. In her analysis the question was always pre- 
senting itself in the unconscious. Why was her 
mother untruthful! Was every one untruthful? 
Was her father to blame? In her sleep she saw 
some one (herself) carrying on her head a figure 
of a woman (her mother and herself), a composite 
personality, wound up and swathed like a mummy, 
as she had seen Italian women carrying burdens 
on their heads, and so we discovered the cause of 
the dementia. The burden that was too heavy for 
her brain to carry was her mother's timidity and 
weakness or childishness of character, which had 
made her afraid to tell her neighbour the hat had 
cost only ten dollars, in the wish to appear as 
wealthy and powerful as the neighbour. 

THE WISH IN LYING AND STEALING 

An untruthful person has always something in 
the unconscious which he unconsciously wishes to 

255 



THE PROBLEM OP THE KERVOUS CHHiD 

hidfe. Such a person lacks a large enough outlet 
for Ms energy, the emotions are blocked by some 
restrictions and there occurs what we call a re- 
pression. As the cause of a repression is hidden 
from the consciousness, it follows that punish- 
ments, reformatories, religious advice, frequently 
increase the untruthfulness. It has been consid- 
ered as a bad habit, as an indication of weakness 
of character, but it is not yet generally known 
that the remedy consists in a proper method of 
education through an analytic procedure and 
broadening of the person's life through larger in- 
terests. Likewise in kleptomania there are emo- 
tional complications. Always there is an unful- 
filled wish in the unconscious, and frequently of 
such a character that the wish fulfillment is im- 
possible. ^^The mechanism of kleptomania is as 
follows : 

1. Relatively normal development with inclina- 
tion to temporary regressions of libido to self-love 
or self-pity. 

2. Patient reaches a stage in life where a par- 
ticular effort would be needed in order to be 
adapted to the requirements of his existence. 

3. He shrinks back from this necessity, because 
it seems to him to be too expensive, or to require 
a sacrifice of the infantile wish to have everything 
given to him by the all-providing mother prin- 
ciple. 

4. He forgets (represses) the thought of this 

256 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

necessity of effort and turns his attentions, uncon- 
sciously to 

5. Unconscious infantile and archaic wishes, 
which, fed by the libido that is not urged toward 
the difficult accomplishment, arise in place of the 
fulfilling of the task. 

6. He tries to repress those wishes, but they 
break through and force him to 

7. Steal. This only shows that the poor fellow 
must steal because he has such a psychological 
past. 

8. He need not steal if he would return to his 
serious task'' ^ and could find satisfaction in doing 
it. The spirit of rivalry and competition pro- 
motes growth. 

It has already been explained that telling a per- 
son of a moral defect never cures him, it is only by 
having the mirror held before him in a psycho- 
analysis of the unconscious so that he sees there 
deformed, unethical wishes, or perhaps wishes 
which have been repressed and which should come 
to light for greater growth of character. 

A group of individuals who lack continuity of 
purpose and show no capacity for continuous ex- 
penditure of effort in any one direction generally 
exhibit anomalies of character such as shiftless- 
ness and even alcoholism. Their life ^4s one long 
contradiction between the apparent wealth of 
means and poverty of results." Also there are 

1 Quoted froro letter of Dr. Jung to author. 

257 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

many weak characters who are led into criminal 
acts and who seem to lack the ordinary moral in- 
hibitions. Perhaps they have been ethically de- 
fective from birth. Perhaps the moral conscious- 
ness is lacking because of poisonous moral atmos- 
phere or of a starved body and soul in childhood. 
This group of psychopathic individuals is an 
enormous social problem, and the solution of these 
most difficult enigmas will come only when the im- 
portance of the nervous make-up of the individual 
is more appreciated. 

Another difficulty which parents meet is in 
teaching children the value of money, and its right 
and wrong uses. In every life there is a craving 
and longing for something, an unsatisfied feeling 
which we try to appease in various ways, in food, 
in reading, in restless wandering, in patronizing 
soda fountains, in ice cream sundaes, in alcohol, in 
clothes, in short almost anything money will buy. 
It is this thing called life we are searching for, 
and working for the power to express ourselves 
causes many a person to become a spendthrift. 
Money is the easiest thing to spend ; it promises 
quicker results, but as we are frequently spend- 
thrifts of our energy in using it for unproductive 
efforts, these acts are comparable to a child's mas- 
turbation. It is verily a form of self-abuse, as for 
instance when we are **Jack of all trades but 
master of none.'' We play at learning in study- 
ing various subjects for a short time, or attempt 

258 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

several kinds of work and are not a success in 
any. It is akin to the child's play, but not to the 
work of the master. 

The parents surrounded by luxury will find it 
quite impossible to teach their children economy. 
The parents may talk economy, and even practice 
economy in some self-denial, but the child is much 
too clever to be fooled by the parent's ^* bluff." 
In too many cases the parents need to learn the 
truth about themselves. The father who criti- 
cizes his son for unnecessary expenses and yet al- 
lows himself luxurious hotels in travelling, lux- 
urious home surroundings and expensive clothes 
for his family, feels that he has a right to his own 
money and that similar extravagance would be 
unwise for his children; and he is quite right in 
thinking so. In allowing himself habits of waste 
and idleness he extends them to his children, but 
as his children learn more by imitation than pre- 
cept they will not understand the parental reason- 
ing. 

The mother who dearly loves to go to ^*a nice 
quiet place" for a week's rest, holds out the same 
prospect to her children and expects them to feel 
the same delight. Poor, foolish little mother with 
her lack of reasoning power! Her children need 
activity and she needs rest, yet she sees no dif- 
ference between her needs and her children's and 
is disappointed with their unsympathetic re- 
marks. Likewise, the parents, more especially the 

259 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

mother, who has bought the children's clothes 
since their infancy, never try at the same time to 
teach their children values of material, but over- 
rule the child's wish in selection until such a time 
^comes in the adolescent years that nature is push- 
ing the child away from its childhood, when there 
is often rebellion on the child's part. There is no 
more pitiful sight than to see the children's ef- 
forts in these adolescent years to free themselves 
from their childhood in attempts at self-assertion, 
independent opinions, desire for freedom and 
space to roam, while the parents hold fast to their 
children with no idea of helping them but only to 
restrict, threaten, punish and make things diffi- 
cult and impossible until the child is driven to des- 
peration and ends with criminal acts, or sinks 
back to the child condition the parent likes so 
much and therefore becomes ** nervous," or, as 
in some cases, he has even been judged defective. 
Underneath all the outward manifestations of 
effort to satisfy the hunger is the underlying 
craving for power. Mankind have not learned yet 
that they can attain it only by struggle and sus- 
tained effort. To teach our children, by example, 
habits of thrift and industry is more important 
than the college education. Always to hold out 
the helping hand in speaking words of encourage- 
ment for work well done will lead the young life 
on and up more than the rebukes and criticism 
so frequent in the home environment. 

260 



TEACHING OF RIGHT AND WRONG 

GBOWTH OP INDIVIDUALITY 

Teaching of right and wrong can never be im- 
parted in the form of lessons. The real teaching 
comes from the subtle suggestions of truth 
through the natural processes — directly through 
persons and things — of the environment. It is 
the truth of our complete being, of our personal 
relationship with the true centre of gravity of our 
life which our children absorb from us. This con- 
duct of right living is attained in childhood by a 
daily life in a place where the truth of the spirit- 
ual world is felt as an unseen influence, and is not 
obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming arti- 
ficial importance. More truth is gained by the 
child surrounded by uncomplaining adversity 
and hardship than by the one surrounded by lux- 
ury. By *' uncomplaining adversity" I mean the 
person who does not blame his adversities and 
hardships to his surroundings but works to con- 
quer and overcome them. The more spiritual 
truth we gain the more we have to give. But 
when a man adopts it as his profession to teach 
truth to others he should remember that a path 
is not made by the caprice of one individual. 
Instead of calling to the crowd to leave their path 
to follow his he had better first follow the path 
with them and live their life to learn their experi- 
ences, that he may teach from practice rather than 
theory. 

261 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEV0U8 CHILD 

The parent who would give the end-results of 
his life to his children, hoping they will profit by 
his experience and begin their lives where his 
stops, is about as unreasonable as would be an 
athlete who expected his children to be born with 
their father's muscular development. Each child 
must start the lesson of life at the beginning. 
The scientist's or the millionaire's son has to be 
born as helpless and ignorant as the poorest 
child and each one must begin the struggle for 
the existence of his distinct individuality as 
against the individuality of his environment. It 
is a dual relationship of the child, with himself 
and the universe. The vital interest of the child is 
constantly enlarging in scope and intensity and 
the consciousness is spreading over a larger area. 
This expansion of the individuality has to be con- 
stantly maintained through the complex relation- 
ship of a life emerging from a prenatal existence 
into a world of separate being. The more perfect 
the harmony of this world through sympathy of 
unity and separateness, the more perfect becomes 
the growth of individuality. It is an evil hour 
when this inter-relationship is checked or inter- 
fered with. Therefore, life on its negative side 
has to maintain a separateness from all else, 
while, on the positive side, it maintains unity with 
the universe of life. In this unity lies the fulfil- 
ment of existence. 

The mind as well as the body has its negative 
262 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

and positive aspects of separateness and unity. 
The dualism of consciousness in a child, as in an 
animal, consists of what is and what is desired, 
whereas in the adult, it changes to a conflict be- 
tween what is and is desired and what is and what 
should be desired. What is desired dwells in the 
heart of the natural life which we share with ani- 
mals and of which we are unconscious, but that 
which should be desired belongs to the life which 
is beyond and must be won. 

The only discipline worth having is a natural 
one got by interest and habit. We require order 
and attention from children, and demand that 
higher discipline which is habitual and has become 
so by the operations of interest. Sincere en- 
deavour and honesty of purpose can be relied 
upon only under conditions that favour their con- 
continuation. Force or compulsion of any kind, 
however necessary it may be, blunts honesty, dulls 
the zeal of the most whole-hearted efforts, and, 
if it comes with too much strength, will spoil all. 
The child works for the love of doing, his hearty 
interest is a powerful force which will eventually 
carry a heavy load to its destination. The sum 
total of existence is to do everything with 
one's whole heart; the child will do so if we 
do not interfere by our criticisms and our 
mistaken ideas of help. Beware of attempting 
to make water run up a hill, instead of flowing 
around it. 

263 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

LIVE AND IjET LIVE 

When the child's growing mind does not work 
in an orderly manner and scorns systematic prog- 
ress, but leaps back and forth over the field of 
study and discipline, now soaring like a skylark 
full of enthusiasm, now down in the blackness of 
despair, feeling hopeless and helpless — it is ob- 
vious to me where the trouble lies. Consciously 
or unconsciously, the parent or teacher has 
worked on his own lines, not in and for the chil- 
dren. There may have been a beautiful system 
with a course of bringing up, schemed, guided and 
ordered by admirable theories, but failing to in- 
terest the child. Let us remember that without 
interest there is no learning but only a mechani- 
cal poll-parrot method of memorizing with no as- 
similation of the truth or meaning in the words. 
If the same thought, memorized in certain words, 
is presented in other words, the child will not 
understand, nor can the poll-parrot-learned sen- 
tences be told in other words. A pupil giving the 
definition of ^* physics'' used the words she had 
learned in her school book and could not accept 
any other, although she understood none of what 
she had learned. Truth can be made attractive, 
whether presented in textbooks or lessons from 
experience. But when lessons are made a mere 
drudgery, with all the child's wishes thinned out, 
there is no value to life for the child. The child 

264 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WRONG 

must live fully, we all must live fully, by doing 
those things thoroughly we have a natural desire 
to do, upon the principle of **live and let live/' 
Thus we do not hinder others who have the same 
rights of existence as we have, nor impair any of 
our own energies in any of the ways described. 
Right and wrong in the adult life is the same as 
in the child's. 

The game must be played fair, the rules obeyed, 
and what is more, the sense of fair play must be 
felt as giving for value received. The gamble of 
getting something for nothing is a dangerous 
policy to pursue, leading to false opinions and 
false values. The directions toward right are the 
promptings of the human heart by which we live, 
the surge of nature is subject to the control of 
reason, but reason is not the compelling force. 
Thoughts and deeds can be judged as right and 
wrong only as they further or retard the one end 
of life, which is more life. To live in accord with 
our nature, giving scope and exercise to every 
power and faculty, brings the positive feeling of 
well-being, which comes only with the fitness of 
every nerve and muscle, the negative of which is 
the functional neurosis. There is a fullness of 
life that can come only to the spirit of mankind in 
the free play of all his natural desires, controlled 
but not repressed. We should remember that 
**vice is only virtue misdirected, power ill- 
used." 

265 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NEEVOUS CHH^D 



'EOTTEN'' dispositioit 



We must keep alive this fullness of living, not 
let it sink into indulgence, indolence or inaction. 
If the energies are pent up which should be 
brought out in daily play, they accumulate, and 
as the energy, the libido, is the most vital and 
powerful force upon which we depend for our 
well-being, an accumulation often means there 
must be some kind of explosion when it will come 
out. The greater the accumulation the greater 
must be our eifort to get rid of it or it will be- 
come stifling, insufferable and poisonous to the 
moral well-being. The assimilation of knowledge 
and experiences in thought and reasoning brings 
an emotional reaction and is analogous to the 
process of metabolism by which our bodies live in 
a continuous process of change and readjustment. 
As the waste matters of the body are eliminated 
in proportion as living tissue is created, so must 
our mental and spiritual life go on by performing 
equally its two-sided function of emotional as- 
similation and elimination. Buried and repressed 
emotions which are retained in the unconscious, 
like food retained in the body unassimilated, de- 
compose, decay. A buried emotion even rots. We 
hear the phrase, *^a rotten disposition" without 
realizing how literally true it is. Good impulses 
cannot spring from a *' rotten '^ disposition; but it 
is wrong to condemn such a person. As well 

266 



TEACHING OF EIGHT AND WEONG 

condemn a person with blood-poisoning when 
aseptic surgery is needed, and the ^^ rotten' ' dis- 
position needs aseptic mental surgery. 

There is a belief prevalent among hard-headed 
business men and capable, efficient women, that 
because they are doing really good work in their 
line and their own life is successful, they are quite 
capable of managing their family affairs. They 
are frequently the cause of this rotten disposition 
in their children, being about as able to keep the 
disposition of their children aseptic as they would 
be to use the surgeon's aseptic dressings. We 
know we cannot make a pear tree out of an apple 
tree, but think we can make a lawyer out of a 
commercial man, a doctor out of a man with lit- 
erary ability. This belief extends from the head 
of a family to the ruler of a nation, who, because 
his government has reached a high state of effi- 
ciency wishes to govern all the other nations in 
his way. He who covers the most ground is not 
the best traveller, but he who has the most delight 
in his journey, has lived each hour to its fullest ; 
for he will have added so much to his equipment 
that he will have more to give for the betterment 
of the race.. 

On the other hand, he who has covered as much 
ground as possible will have so exhausted him- 
self that, far from being able to add to the better- 
ment, he will need to ask aid to recuperate his 
wasted energies. One who sows more than he 

267 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHK.D 

can reap, and will not allow others to reap it, is 
like the ruler who has delusions of his own power 
and will not share and co-operate with others. 
On such occasions new ideals must be set up by 
those ruled, and hope takes another direction. 
"When the ideal must change, both for children 
and nations, creeds, doctrines and opinions are 
remodelled. It is a spirit of revolution which de- 
velops and represents a clearing away of old 
dogmas of the perfection of rulers, a breaking 
away from bondage of authority, an upsetting of 
ihe tables from which the nourishment is gone. 
It is a hard hour in the life of a ^hild when he 
discovers his parents over-stepping the limits of 
propriety as originally bounded. If the child can 
make a restatement in his own mind of the direc- 
tion and aim to follow, his adolescence and re- 
adjustment will be accomplished. Sooner or later 
the child must see the flaws in the parental make- 
up, and the parent is wise who does not pretend 
perfection, but, when necessary, forestalls that 
knowledge by admitting his mistakes in judgment 
and with the child searches for the right or wrong 
method by discussions or experiments. Interest 
must be the starting-point in all we do, or we shall 
not do w^ll. The urge of necessity arouses inter- 
est and ambition; the ambitious child will be an 
apt pupil. 



268 



CHAPTER XIII 

SELF AND CHARACTER 

''Self comes to itself only through society, and 
as a member of society. The self apart from other 
selves is nothing." 

The person who is at all concerned with psy- 
chology will find it especially interesting to study 
in himself the growth of knowledge of his own 
self, and his gradual formation of self-regarding 
sentiments because this particular phase of mental 
development has an obvious bearing, not only 
upon his own practical problems but also upon 
those who constitute his family and intimates. It 
exemplifies in a very striking manner the depend- 
ence of the individual upon the society of which 
he is a member. 

We are apt to think nothing is so directly the 
private possession of each one of us as his own 
self and the idea of himself, and yet in fact, if 
we were isolated and impervious individuals we 
would never be persons at all. As though to 
guard against too much shutting up of one's self 
away from mankind, a deep instinct, the herd in- 
stinct, is implanted in us. The distinctions each 
one of us draws between himself and other per- 
sons and things are not by any means so clear or 

269 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE NERVOUiS CBILD 

consistent as we often suppose, and it is the busi- 
ness of psychology to inquire whether our knowl- 
edge is consistent and reasonable. Psychology 
shows us that we distinguish ourselves from others 
and that we regard ourselves as permanently on 
this side of insanity, although we cannot say as 
much for the other members of society. *'Am I 
the man I think I am!^' would be a very valuable 
question for each individual to ask himself. The 
supposedly loveliest mother may be weakly in- 
dulgent, the stern, fussy discipline of parent or 
teacher may be hiding the weakness of a bully who 
would run from a man of his size. 

GROWTH OF SELF 

Every seed, whether plant, animal or human 
being, contains a form of life which cannot be 
changed (temperament). We accept that fact in 
growing our flowers and vegetables, putting cer- 
tain ones in the shade, others in strong sunlight. 
We know the luscious melons will only grow to fine 
crispness in rich, heavy loam. We give our ani- 
mals the food they need for their best develop- 
ment, the horse has his hay and oats, the cow her 
corn fodder and bran mash. We do not blame the 
melons for not growing where the celery will, nor 
kick the horse because he needs oats when the 
cow does not, but we blame our children when they 
do not thrive on the treatment we mete out to 

270 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

them. If we had to pay a large price, many thou- 
sand dollars, before we were allowed to have a 
child, would we feel we possessed a greater treas- 
ure in each child! The mother gives in sacrifice 
and suffering and risks her life for each child, 
the father gives nothing. If he is the fine strong 
character of the ideal man he will give of sym- 
pathy and deepest love when he sees his wife in 
the throes of childbirth, the child will be a divine 
proof of her love for him and make their union 
sacred. 

But too often mankind accepts children in a 
spirit of accumulation, and is proud to show its 
reproductive power. Fine children bespeak a 
clean life and fine parents. When the child is 
accepted merely as an addition to his father ^s pos- 
sessions, or as a care and problem to a tired 
mother, the child will necessarily become a prob- 
lem, instead of a fine, healthy human animal, and 
may become a nervous child. ^ ' What is th^ matter 
with the Jones family? Some of them are always 
sick, they are really tiresome, ' ' we frequently hear 
said. The Jones family are to be pitied, they may 
be very conscientious and doing their best. But 
while the children are being ^' loved to death" by 
one part of the family, and the other part is 
preaching — ''Spare the rod and spoil the child," 
they are being pulled two ways and cannot become 
firmly planted for good growth. 

We do not generally suppose that even the more 
271 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILB 

intelligent animals, such as the dog, reflect on 
themselves and their character. We probably ad- 
mit, however, that in perception they seem to 
distinguish their bodies from all other things and 
in some rudimentary way to recognize them as 
their own. But it is quite conceivable that some 
conscious beings do not make even this elemen- 
tary distinction, and that their bodies always re- 
main as strange to them as its tail seems to be to 
the kitten who chases it, or its toes to the baby 
who tries to cut his teeth on them. We adults 
ordinarily think of ourselves as slightly em- 
bodied. 

We may at times distinguish between soul and 
body and regard the former as particularly our 
own, but, when for example, we say we are going 
to read, or play a game of golf, or we have a head- 
ache, the body seems a very prominent part of 
ourselves. We could not play golf without a body. 
Could we read without a body? Shut your eyes 
and read from memory a sign painted on a fence. 
The eyes have been educated by the brain to read, 
but without a brain the eyes could not have learned 
to read. In a word, we think of ourselves as being 
a body, we see it, while the awareness of our per- 
sonal identity depends not only upon the sensory 
experiences which we are constantly receiving 
from various parts of our body, but also upon the 
emotional experiences which we have received. 
Then the child learning how to run, to throw a 

272 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

ball, to dance to music, learns not merely how to 
do things, hut what it feels like to do them. Edu- 
cation consists not merely in doing, but in feeling. 
The rosebud must feel the warm sun's rays before 
expanding into the blossom and so the budding out 
or building out of the self and character is aided 
by the intelligent sympathy and complete under- 
standing of parents and teachers. Thus the 
process of learning to understand oneself and of 
learning to understand others are really one. It 
is useless for physician, teacher or parent to at- 
tempt working with the emotions of others with- 
out first understanding his own by a thorough 
psychoanalysis. That should be required of every 
life, especially in those attempting human guid- 
ance. We cannot come to understand the be- 
haviour and emotions and motives of others ex- 
cept by interpreting them in the light of our 
own. *^The proper study of mankind is man.'* 
(Pope.) 

We see the children's conception of themselves 
reflect the attitude of others toward them, nor is 
this much less true of adults. Few of us can with- 
stand flattery if long continued. We may resist at 
first, but soon we fancy ourselves to be all that 
we hear. In schools and at home this is important, 
especially among adolescents, who are generally 
very sensitive to the opinion of their seniors and 
equals. It is remarkable how often a boy on leav- 
ing school and entering a new circle of acquaint- 

273 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUlS CHH^D 

ance will belie a firmly established school reputa- 
tion, particularly if it was bad. He told a few 
lies when be first went to school, or perhaps 
offended against a schoolboy's code of morals, 
and from that time he was counted a liar or a 
sneak and knew that every one counted him as one, 
so he comes to think of himself as worthless and 
continues to act as worthless. The same thing 
happens when a delicate or nervous child is sent 
away from home. He will grow and thrive until 
he meets the same home influence. When he meets 
the original obstruction, which previously blocked 
his flow of health, he becomes ill or nervous again. 
But when he comes out into the world, and hon- 
esty and honour are expected of him, his conduct 
improves with the conception of his own char- 
acter, which he gets by comparison with what he 
learns of others. The schoolmaster's problem is 
difficult, no doubt, in dealing with such a boy. 
Punishments and pious talks are often equally 
useless ; the punishment will be no encouragement, 
and as the child cannot act with the purpose of an 
adult he acts largely on impulse. If the punish- 
ment is too heavy to suit the mental power of the 
child it merely has a stunting effect. A pious talk 
is usually above the child's reach. The master 
should at least remember this, that whenever he 
shows a boy he has lost all confidence in him, 
he can never do to that boy anything but 
harm. 

274 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

NEGATIVISM 

In previous pages we noted the tendency of the 
child to imitation, which enables it to live through 
the experiences of others, as his first means of 
fitting himself into his social surroundings. We 
now have to note another tendency, namely, 
opposition, as it is often called — technically, 
negativism. In the small baby's anger there is 
implied a kind of opposition to the world, but the 
tendency to opposition most frequently shows that 
the individual has been prevented from fitting him- 
self into his social surroundings and in opposing 
them is following the instinct of self-assertion. 
These tendencies of the child are termed obstinacy 
and showing-off, but in asserting what is at first 
a very rudimentary self, the child enriches its 
knowledge of itself and others. This self-assertive 
tendency is shown by a child, even a very young 
child, when he feels himself misunderstood, among 
people either younger, weaker or less capable. In 
the presence of superiority, this tendency to self- 
assertion expresses itself in bashfulness or feel- 
ings of inferiority. Never make your child or any 
person feel inferior, endeavour always to lift up 
by the desire to learn. You are as weak as the 
child if you show your superiority. 

In actual life the tendency to opposition may 
take an anti-social direction. We see it in the 
man who seeks his advantage at the expense of 

275 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

others, and who in his unconscious thought is still 
trying to accumulate, to feed the unsatisfied wants 
of childhood. He thinks only of himself, we call 
him selfish, but he is searching for power and is 
able to express it only in dollars and cents. We 
see the anti-social tendency in castles in the air, 
which he has not found in reality. The eccentric 
appears unusual, he does not follow the herd, he 
has been trampled on and is bleating for mother 
to sympathize with him. Opposition frequently 
hides ignorance, for if he did not oppose he feels 
he might betray his failures, so he figuratively 
builds a wall of what successes he has had and 
hides behind it, shouting out his opinions on sub- 
jects, the meaning of which is hidden from himself. 
The world calls such a person conceited. If man- 
kind simply accepted all opinions and imitated one 
another's habits, no progress would be possible. 
Initiative, inventiveness, obstinacy, opposition, 
are all efforts for self-assertion and are necessary 
to the most unselfish men if they are to do any- 
thing great, as necessary to the man who fights for 
justice and honesty as to the man who fights for 
his private gain, which is for honesty for him- 
self. 

Both self-satisfaction and lack of self-confidence 
in either child or man are a hindrance to progress, 
not in the process of learning, but in the growth of 
character. When the tendencies to self-assertion 
and its opposite are properly balanced, their com- 

276 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

bination is a constant incentive to progress. In 
psychoanalysis a person is enabled to see how far 
he falls short of the required balance, he learns the 
cause of the ineffective struggle to attain the de- 
sired result. As long as he measures himself up 
with what he is and what he ought to be, he will 
push on until a higher stage is reached; when he 
becomes self-respecting in the full sense he no 
longer wonders what others will think of him, but 
what he will think of himself if he behaves in a 
certain way. 

The child or individual who lacks confidence 
fails to improve just because he thinks himself 
incapable of improving, and the difficulty in such 
a case is that more individual treatment is needed 
than can be given a child in class work, or the indi- 
vidual who is treated by textbook knowledge. 
Step by step must such a case be helped, showing 
that the patient is able to do what seemed impos- 
sible, until he feels more belief in himself. Much 
caution, learned from experience, is necessary in 
leading such a case to self-confidence, or it may 
produce a kind of hidden priggish conceit in him, 
leaving him outwardly as ineffective as ever. 
Dream analysis is the only method of accurately 
watching the progress of the individual in his 
restoration to confidence. The reasons for such a 
condition of lacking confidence in one 's ability are 
many, sometimes from unbalanced discipline at 
home, often from bullying in school. 

277 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

OVEB-CONFroENCE 

Exaggerated self-confidence is even more deadly 
to a well-rounded life, for he who is already per- 
fect in his own estimation has not incentive for 
improvement. And as the world does not find 
him perfect, but is rather bored by his conceited 
self-satisfaction, he feels he is not appreciated or 
understood. Mild delusions of grandeur and per- 
secution are found and the patient retires into 
himself with an outward form of work which 
means nothing to the world, but affords the great- 
est satisfaction to the patient. The work chosen 
by a person suifering from exaggerated self-satis- 
faction or conceit is a symbol of the cause of the 
conceit. It frequently takes the form of religion, 
among scientific minds it takes the form of re- 
search work, not the legitimate research of the 
true scientist who is searching for vital truth that 
helps mankind, but the search for an answer to the 
question why satisfaction is lacking in the pa- 
tient's life. Mathematicians suffering nervous 
breakdowns discover in a psychoanalysis that 
they have been figuring on the solution of 
their unknown personal problems. In one in- 
stance, a professor of mathematics, unmarried, 
could not listen to music without suffering from 
great excitement and pain in the head. Fear that 
he would hear music haunted and gradually over- 
came him, he lost all reasoning power, and re- 

278 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

signed his position. He had read of the theories 
of psychoanalysis and sought relief in its methods. 
Then it was discovered that he had been unsuc- 
cessful in all love affairs. His attentions were at 
first returned by the girl, then she became more 
distant on each occasion until a definite refusal 
was given. Into the last love affair he had put 
all his love, hopes and ambitions, but after a few 
months came evasive answers. The wedding day 
was not yet possible, his fiancee said, and then she 
left him for an extended tour with an uncertain 
whereabouts, and an address through her bankers. 
Letters soon became rare and ceased, she giving 
only the unsatisfactory reason that they were not 
suited to each other. He searched his memory for 
the cause of his love failures. He led an exem- 
plary life, was finely educated, well-bred, artistic, 
with a sure appreciation of beauty. 

As he thought always of why he was refused, 
he began to make charts of everything to illus- 
trate his explanations and covered pages with 
figures, outside of his class room. In a railway 
train he was always figuring on some problem, 
he would take infinite pains in drawing charts, 
going into minute detail which interested no one 
and was of no use. In his dreams he was con- 
stantly being threatened with a danger, and often 
he was following some one or going along with a 
number of people and imitating them. This fur- 
nished the explanation of his love affairs ending 

279 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHILD 

so unhappily for him. Always in life, he was fol- 
lowing, but was never the leader. He lacked in- 
itiative, he approached people more as a woman 
or a child, expecting encouragement, favours and 
sympathetic advice, than as a man to make place 
for himself and his work. He could not under- 
stand that he was a failure in the eyes of his 
sweethearts. They saw his inability to advance, 
but he was perfectly satisfied with himself. Early 
scholastic honours had won too much praise from 
his family and friends so that he became very 
conceited, and refined home surroundings had 
softened and weakened his power of resistance. 
He had never sown any wild oats. The ** treat 
'em rough '' method was what he needed to 
strengthen his energy, to arouse a passion of 
conquest. But so deeply rooted were his false 
idea-weeds of character, that he travelled for three 
years from one analyst to another, calling the un- 
conscious material of his dreams * ^ stuff, ' ' until he 
found one strong enough to break down his re- 
sistance, when he saw himself quite plainly as a 
jackass in the following dream: 

^^A queer-loohing animal was coming toward 
me, it looked like a hull-dog with marks of a fleur- 
de-lis on its forehead, it grew very large and he- 
came a hig hird like an eagle. The animal seemed 
to want me to pet it. I was afraid of it and put on 
a heavy pair of gloves hefore touching it, hut I 
did not touch it, and for a while I stood looking 

280 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

at it. Then its wings spread and it flew away; 
looked like cm eagle. It did not like me and was 
im a hurry to get away. I then went up some 
stadrs to a donkey pen, enclosed with bars, the 
floor was filthy. I see^med to he m the pen, or 
near it, eating somethimg like snow or like snow 
ice cream, which when children, we made of snow, 
mMk amd sugar.'' 

Analysis of the dream showed the patient saw 
the animal part of his nature coming toward him, 
in the form of sexual desires and was afraid of 
it in his love affairs. His first love affair had been 
with an English girl (bull-dog) ; the second with 
a French girl (fleur-de-lis) ; and the third with an 
American girl (eagle). She had left him without 
giving a reason, had become interested in scientific 
work and succeeded in engineering and surveying 
with large financial returns. While she was meas- 
uring large areas, he was working on tiny dia- 
grams. His ambitions only led to the company of 
jackasses like himself, while she soared above him, 
and he made a childish mess of his life (snow 
cream) instead of doing real things, making real 
food. In the dream the floor of the jackass pen 
was filthy, the patient having discovered that un- 
married life did not lead to clean ways of thinking 
and living. 

The analysis of this patient further showed that 
an ambitious mother in his early years had closely 
watched him, selecting his friends and studies, 

281 



THE PEOBLEM OP THE NERVOUS CmLD 

and had attempted to start him in a commercial 
life, bnt tie clung to mathematics and was accepted 
as a teacher in a college. In his dreams he was 
first figuring how to get away from his mother, 
and later how to keep his sweetheart. His mother 
always tried to make him perfect. ISTo one else 
cared what he was, and this he could not under- 
stand. 

AN UNNUKTUKED SOUL 

An epileptic, a man, an only child, forty years 
old, parents not living, came for an analysis, 
hoping to be freed from his attacks. He had 
never had a love affair, his mother had done all 
his thinking for him, and, as she was very deli- 
cate, had always surrounded him with don'ts, fear- 
ing that he, too, would be delicate. His father 
was equally careful in protecting the patient; no 
rough-and-tumble play of childhood was ever al- 
lowed and the parents succeeded in producing a 
very delicate lady-like man. He had studied for 
the ministry but had never taken orders. The only 
healthy years of his life were at college — then he 
had no attacks. But strange to say the parents 
learned nothing from this fact. The seizures be- 
gan when very young, occurring at irregular in- 
tervals, a month or six weeks apart. His mother 
had taught music before her marriage, so regard- 
less of what natural ability the patient had, his 
major subject at college was music and he 

282 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

graduated with a B.S. in music. His playing was 
atrocious, very mechanical, naturally no emotional 
feeling in it as his emotions were all blocked up 
and buried beneath a debris of outside opinions 
forced upon him. The first dream he brought 
showed clearly the cause and he saw it, saying he 
was sure he had been too closely sheltered, too 
much in the shade. He had always been afraid of 
every move, fearing it would bring on an attack, 
never could decide what to do. The dreams which 
preceded an attack always showed him as attempt- 
ing to change something, but unable to do so at 
first, and then later the unconscious thought 
showed plainly that a girl was needed to make his 
life whole and strong. He declared he knew that 
was true as his college chum was an epileptic and 
since marriage had been well. I do not know that 
marriage usually helps epilepsy, as the epileptic 
is not free enough from his unconscious complexes 
to marry. And only after several weeks ' analysis 
did the patient bring in the following dreams : 

In the first dream the patient ^^was the only 
man at a reception, every one was talking noisily. 
Tea was served, hut I was sta/ndimg on the bottom 
of a trench and was the only one there. The ladies 
stood on high benches so that they were above, 
while I could only just see over. I remarlced that 
it seemed queer that they were so much above me. 
Then the scene changed to an amphitheatre, with 
a large audience, I was seated m the middle 

283 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHiD 

nboiit half way up. I had a strange desire to' 
change my Imen shirt and tried to remove the one 
I had on, hut it was difficult to do. I was strug- 
gling to get it free from my arms and over my 
heady when a man in front turned around and 
offered to assist me. Then a man seated by my 
side said to the man in fronts 'He does not need 
any help, he is all right now, it is only epilepsy.' '^ 

The analysis showed that the patient was below 
the level of existence and was so buried in the 
mother (the trench, where one hides from danger 
as his mother had always made him hide away) 
that he could not get a proper view of life. He 
had lifted women to such an exalted position (his 
study for the ministry and adoration of the Virgin 
Mary) that he saw it was unnatural, but could not 
understand that it was because his life was also 
unnatural. In the second part of the dream the 
patient shows how his unnatural life has weakened 
his power. He has "a strong desire to change my 
Ivnen shirt.'' The linen shirt brought associa- 
tions of homespun linen, old-fashioned people and 
ideas, from which the patient tries to free him- 
self but is unable to do so without help. 

In another dream: ''It seemed I and others 
were under the control of an absolute dictator or 
disciplinarian called Orlando Smith and whenever 
I might seem to forget his power and hegim, to 
think myself independent I would suddenly he 
made aware of his authority over me. As a motor- 

284 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

man on an electric car sometimes works the brake 
m a choppy way when progress has to he slow be- 
cause of a truck on the track, such was the way in 
my dream, feeling free and going on until I would 
suddenly become aware of the tyrant ruling me 
and I would stop with a start/ ^ 

Analysis : His epilepsy is the tyrant whom the 
censor of the dream allows to come into conscious 
thought as ^^ Orlando Smith.'' The patient knew 
of no one with such a name. * ^ Orlando ' ' suggested 
a place in Florida named Orlando where he had 
met fifteen years ago a girl who had interested him, 
then came associations of Shakespeare 's character 
Orlando whom the patient thought had laid love 
poems in the woods and was lovesick for Rosalind. 
*^ Smith" was the name of an unmarried friend 
of the patient who also suffered from similar at- 
tacks. Thus we see the unconscious comparison 
of a lovesick person and an epileptic, and the pa- 
tient cannot free himself from the instinct of mat- 
ing, which we know is the strongest in life. 

Another dream of a pet dog which was so re- 
markably well trained it would do anything it was 
told, which brought associations to the patient of 
a pet Pomeranian he had had. The Pomeranian 
was so hard to control, that the patient loaned him 
to some one else, but the dog was so snappy he 
was given back. In the unconscious the patient 
uses the dog as a libido symbol of himself, and 
we see that the patient 's libido comes back to him 

285 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CmLD 

in epileptic attacks. A woman's ^^don'ts" have 
made Mm fearful and driven back the libido into 
the patient, producing an attack. 

The last and most important dream was of a 
moving picture the patient had seen called *^The 
Angel of Peace, ' ' in which the angel was a pretty- 
girl. Children came from her skirts, bringing 
food, and in the dream they offered food to the 
patient. The angel of peace and the children 
needed no analysis, but showed the patient's needs 
and solution of his problem. His soul was starved, 
his body even looked starved, so thin and pinched 
was his appearance, no filling out of character had 
been possible. 

A FRAGMENTARY SOUL 

The conceited person's sentiments for himself 
may take the form of pride or that of vanity, the 
one based more on his own conception of his char- 
acter and position, the other on what he takes 
to be others' conception of him. Pride is evi- 
dently nearer to self-respect and sometimes we 
use the word almost as a term of approbation; 
but in its strict sense pride represents selfishness 
and excludes humility, while the self-respecting 
man feels humble and reverent before the proper 
objects but detests a false moral humility as 
** toadying, favouring or cringing" before su- 
periors. Both pride and vanity may be wounded, 
the former by one's own failure, the latter by the 

286 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

contempt of others; but pride is the less easily 
hurt, for it is apt to attribute its failure wholly to 
the injustice of others. Both sentiments rest upon 
narrowness of outlook and constitute infantile re- 
actions. Sometimes when the attempt to destroy 
false pride and vanity by explainings is ineffec- 
tual, it may be diminished (in boys and girls more 
often than adults) by encouraging those who ex- 
hibit these attributes to take an interest in matters 
where they are so obviously incompetent that they 
cannot deceive even themselves. When these re- 
actions fail, where the motive of self is so exag- 
gerated that a person lives in a world of **me '' 
and ^^mine" and has no share in the broad human 
interests which lift him out of himself, his life 
remains a fragment and the virtues have no soil to 
grow in, the creative emotions are buried in him- 
self. Man cannot create with himself alone; an- 
other human is necessary. *^ Complete develop- 
ment of character can be attained only by devoting 
ourselves to some large end in co-operation with 
others." When we find it, by nature's methods of 
reproduction of the species in a well-mated exist- 
ence, we are most fortunate, as it is the most satis- 
factory. Life is ever crying out for more life. 
When we find it in the pursuit of science, in 
poetry or religion, we call it a * ^ sublimation, " 
as it is a lifting up of the emotional content out 
of the gross sexual into the intellectual control of 
the instincts. 

287 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NEEVOUiS CHHiD 

WHAT IS THE SELF? 

It has been pointed ont in the beginning of this 
chapter that the idea each one of us has of him- 
self is not really so clear as we often suppose it to 
be. When a person says '^It is as certain as that 
I am standing here" when he wishes strongly to 
affirm his belief, and he is asked what he means by 
this **I'' of which he speaks so positively, he will 
not find it so easy to answer. When asked as to 
some whys and wherefores of his conduct, he will 
find some difficulties, for he has acted on what he 
thinks is an impulse, the origin of which he does 
not know, and he will soon discover that the 
boundaries of what he considers his self vary 
greatly from time to time. They vary according 
to whether his actions proceed from conscious or 
unconscious wishes, a statement which will be bet- 
ter understood by the world as time goes on. The 
world is beginning, dimly, to perceive that war 
comes from an accumulation of emotional energy 
in the unconscious which bursts forth into greed, 
envy and hatred, and that pent up emotions poison 
the moral life as food retained poisons the chemi- 
cal life, of nations as well as individuals. The 
safety of life depends upon a greater understand- 
ing of these fundamental laws. When the ruler 
of a nation as well as the ruler of a family realizes 
that the formation of character rests upon indi- 
vidual strength rather than upon fear of au- 

288 • 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

thority; that firmness and reliability of character 
must be the result of a greater breadth of thought 
and sympathy on the part of the ruling authority, 
and arousing the interest and activity, sharing 
with them instead of making the weaker feel the 
power of the greater, a great step forward will be 
made in civilization. 

In the analysis of self we may begin in a nega- 
tive way of thinking what we are not. Further 
analysis of the unconscious frequently shows that 
what we think we are not is just exactly what we 
are. Our self-sufficiency is the reverse of our true 
self. **In its widest sense,'* says Professor 
James, ''a man's self is the sum total of what he 
can call his, not only his body and his psychic 
power, but his clothes and his house, his wife and 
his children, his ancestors and friends, his reputa- 
tion and works, his land and horses, and his yachts 
and bank account. All these things give him the 
same emotions. If they wax and prosper he feels 
triumphant ; if they dwindle and die away, he feels 
downcast." (Principles of Psychology.) And 
yet at times we revolt against the body as not our- 
selves, as when we say ' ' the spirit is willing but 
the flesh is weak, " or * ' I am not frightened though 
my body is trembling." The self of fevered de- 
lirium and of dreams is not the ordinary self. If 
sudden excitement or passion carries us away, and 
we act in a manner inconsistent with our usual 
character as we conceive it, we are apt to repudi- 

289 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERV0U8 CHttD 

ate our behaviour and say, ''I was not myself 
when I felt, thought or did that. ' ^ We are learn- 
ing that those thoughts, feelings or actions pro- 
ceed from our unconscious which is in such in- 
stances stronger than our conscious, and there will 
be a consequent lack of self-control with weak 
character formation. 



MAKING OF CHARACTER 

Training of character is a double problem. The 
child who is selfish at home, who has not been 
taught self-control and has not felt the discipline 
of self-denial, will be selfish at school and after 
school life. The enlargement of the circumstances 
gives the selfish person more opportunity to get 
what he wants, but the self that he gratifies will be 
small and empty. The unselfish, benevolent, 
public-spirited and patriotic frequently injure 
themselves in doing good to others, exhausted in 
excessive giving and crippling their energy, re- 
ceiving no return for their energy expended. The 
recipient too often belongs to the great mass of 
inefficients who drain both national and individual 
resources, not self-supporting by their own efforts, 
but seeking to live by the efforts of others. Self- 
ish and unselfish alike must seek their own wel- 
fare, but the selfish seek it in opposition to the 
society, of which in spite of themselves, they can- 
not remain members, and are consumed with 

290 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

envy and jealousy of those unselfish ones, who, by 
their own efforts identify their own good with a 
good that goes beyond themselves. 

Training of character in children is also a dou- 
ble problem. Good habits and interests must be 
formed, and those that are dangerous must be 
understood and excluded. Something may be 
accomplished if it is remembered that forcible 
repression is an undesirable method unless a bet- 
ter is fostered in its place. It is this repression 
and prohibition which cause emotional accumula- 
tion, and then we blame such persons and declare 
they have a ^' rotten disposition '' and nations 
under such repressions go to war. ^^ Rotten'' is a 
very descriptive word, for, as we have said, emo- 
tions when repressed decay and become septic. 
When the life energy has been denied a free out- 
let and nervous troubles result, little can be ac- 
complished in the formation of character by 
formal moral instruction, and lessons in civics, 
patriotism and the like are too likely to breed 
prigs. Character is formed by action, and not by 
isolated lessons. The subject of prohibition is a 
grave one. A constitutional amendment prohibit- 
ing alcoholic drink is expected to improve the 
character of the nation. It probably will, although 
the weak natures which seek relief from their 
cravings and longings in alcohol may seek relief 
in more dangerous methods of criminal acts of 
violence. Alcohol acts quickly and, as we often 

291 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHH^D 

see in psychoanalytic work, affords instant relief 
from a frenzy of repressed emotions with forget- 
fulness and sleep. As a patient remarked, *'I was 
drunk last night and feel played out this morn- 
ing, but if I had not gotten drunk I should have 
raped some woman or smashed a jewelry store 
window, I had to do something." This patient 
has now recovered from the feeling ^ ' I had to do 
something," and is doing something, real work, as 
the overseer of a certain part in a factory. When 
he looked into his unconscious and saw the low- 
down creature he was, he turned away in horror 
and disgust. 

PEACE 

A league of nations is now formed to arrange a 
lasting peace. We trust the eminent people sitting 
around the peace table will realize the necessity 
of starting up industries and occupations to keep 
the people busy, with trade throughout the world. 
Compulsory education, compulsory work and 
arousing men's ambitions mil do more to keep 
peace than the trade restrictions to create rivalry 
and envy. Competition is healthful and arouses 
desire for self -improvement. To lift up and im- 
prove the enormous mass of inefficient population 
is slow, and must be largely accomplished through 
the children. We know the children of alcoholic 
parents are apt to show what poor seed was 
planted, and we hope to improve the future gen- 

292 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

erations with better seed and better soil. But 
weeds thrive even better in good soil, and I pre- 
dict that the lower class will become dangerous 
when they no longer find comfort in a pail of beer. 
Labour troubles are not entirely the result of 
ignorance of the employed, but more often of the 
employer, because the employed is to the employer 
as is the child to the parent. We expect too much 
of both child and the employed, much more than 
we do of ourselves. An entire nation so strictly 
guarded, education made difficult and the self of 
the individual so ignored as in Russia must neces- 
sarily lack knowledge of experience and self- 
reliance; they can only suffer cruelly as our chil- 
dren would if suddenly left alone without love and 
guidance. An army of civilization is needed to 
supply Russia with food and comforts for the 
people to show them a life that is not of misery 
and suffering, and then the natural instincts will 
again come to life. Greed and accumulation are 
not natural instincts, but are the products of civili- 
zation. We may take care of a surplus as the dog 
buries his bone, but he does not spend his entire 
time in hunting bones to bury, nor should man- 
kind. 

Far more instructive than lessons in morals are 
actual examples, — for the young are ready to wor- 
ship heroes and take great pains to copy them, — 
the appeal to imagination which is made by the 
stories of brave deeds and noble characters, and 

293 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 

still more by honourable traditions of the family 
or school. To be worthy of onr ancestors helps 
many weak, uncertain lives to persevere, but the 
most influential of all means is sympathetic per- 
sonal encouragement of common interests and of 
the natural tendencies toward difficult occupations, 
which in numberless ways take children out of 
themselves. If children are to become self- 
respecting, responsible persons, they must with 
tact and patience be incited to take upon them- 
selves gradually widening responsibility. 

BREADTH OF CHARACTER 

Nevertheless, training must not be such that 
when later the child becomes his own master, his 
character ceases to grow toward good. The 
primitive savages exercise all the virtues toward 
their own tribe but when they meet a stranger 
regard it in no way wrong to rob, torture or kill 
him. We see it in the gipsies who have a fine code 
of morals among themselves. Indeed, we have 
seen it in the great world conflict where nations 
lost sight of any duty to their neighbour, or else 
they have an unreasonably narrow conception of 
the neighbour to whom they owe the right of exist- 
ence. People had been trained in the customs of 
their own country, but there they stuck, never 
using their intelligence so as to widen their notions 
of right and wrong. Greater breadth of view, 

294 



SELF AND CHARACTER 

breadth of sympathy, breadth of interest cannot 
be given without reasonableness, thought and 
understanding of the primitive urge of nature 
always existing in the unconscious of the indi- 
vidual. 

I do not wish to give the idea that the uncon- 
scious is always a source of danger; it is so only 
when the individual is not able to take the energy 
from the unconscious and use it in the construc- 
tion of his life, for life has always a tomorrow 
with new possibilities to work for. The uncon- 
scious is made up of material repressed from the 
conscious, stifled and shut up by the forces of cir- 
cumstances and, as we have said, like an untrained 
horse is shut up out of sight and hearing, but is 
just as wild and uncontrolled. But if that horse is 
trained to drive and obey he is like the urge of life 
in us when it is controlled, a very great power 
which we can use. When a child has a wish which 
cannot be granted, the wish does not vanish but is 
shut out of sight like the horse, whereas, if we 
could help the child to see why he cannot have 
his wish granted, he would be able to control his 
wish until he could understand the reason. The 
controlled energy of life will be our servant like 
the electric current when it follows along a con- 
ductor, but the wild electrical discharge destroys 
and kills. To teach self-control to our children 
is a great trial to our patience, but it will be more 
conducive to everlasting peace than all the 

295 



THE PROBLEM OF THE NERVOUS CHHjD 

Leagues of Nations, Peace Tables and laws of the 
land. The true peace comes from within, and 
depends more upon the character of the individual 
and the individual 's governing himself than upon 
the laws enforced from without. 



296 



INDEX 



Active, child must be, 66 
Admiration, 11 
Alcohol, 124, 153, 257, 291 
Anger, 160 
Anxiety, 161 
Aphasia, 116 

Appearance, personal, 117 
Association, free, 24, 58 
Attention, 106 
Autoerotism, 168, 258 

Blocked libido, 29, 190 
Boy, impossible, 98 
Boys' club, 102 
Burbank, Luther, 109 
Buried emotions, 160, 266 
Burns, Robert, 159 

Calf love, 72 
Cannon, 160 
Castration, 166 
Censor, 47 
Character, 269, 294 

negative, 3 
Child activity, 66 

country, 21 

shut up, 187 

training, 181, 294 
Childish problems, unsolved, 78 
Children, capable, 108 

defence against, 122 

of the rich, 90 
Child's vrords, 4 
City life, unwholesome, 22, 132 
Cognition, 95 
Complex, 136 

housewife's, cause of, 131, 
136 

parent, 130 

thirteen, 150 
Composite nature of symbol, 44 

297 



Conation, 94 
Conceit, 277, 286 
Concentration, 76 
Confirmation, 139 
Conflict, 48, 50 

Consciousness, dualism of, 263 
Creative emotions, 188 
Curiosity, 178 

Day dreaming, 51 

Defence against children, 122 

inferiority feeling, 243 

reactions, 113 

unpleasant demands, 223 

work, 126 
Dementia praecox^ 124, 157, 

255 
Descendants of the repressed, 

24 
Desexualization, 166 
Disposition, 92 

"rotten", 49, 266 
Dream, 44, 54 

analysis, 277 

symbolism, 56 

Education, 243 

Emotions, 160, 162, 273, 283, 

288, 291 

buried, 160, 266 

childish, 192 

creative, 188 

starved, 190 
Epilepsy, 254, 282 
Erotism, muscle, 195 
Exhibitionism, 128 

Failures, 136 

Family atmosphere, 14, 114 

nervous, 123 

skeleton, 69 



INDEX 



Father, as model, 239 

complex, 226 

image, 140 
Fear, 160 
Feeling, 95 

Fixation of libido, 81, 177 
Free association, 24, 58 
Freud, S., 110, note 

Guiding the libido, 67 

Heart disease, 154 

Heraclitus, 34 

Husband, despotic, wanted, 173 

Ideal, the feminine, 143 
Identification, 45 
Idolized daughter, 118 

son, 121 
Illness a regression, 88 

defence, 223 

as tyranny, 228 
Imagining vs. thinking, 158 
Imitation, 7 

game, 241 
Impossible boy, an, 98 
Incendiarism, 206 
Incest phantasy, 138, 139 
Incorrigible child, 233 

girl, 171 
Individuality, growth of, 261 
Infants, aged, 18 
Inferiority, feeling of, 243, 275 
Influences, early, 19, 111 
Insubordination, 232 
Intelligence tests, 16 
Interpretation, 58 

James, William, 162, 289 

Jealousy, 236 

Jung, C. G., vii, 64, 256 

Kleptomania, 256 

Latent vs. manifest, 60 
Libido, 26, 38, 64, 266 

blocked, 29, 190 

fixation of, 81 



guiding, 67 

liberation of, 184 

regression of, 230 

splitting of, 82 

sublimation of, 65, 197 
Longfellow, 40 
Love affairs, 72 

calf, 72 

early, 75 

mother, 135 

springtime of, 164 
" Loved to death," 271 
Lowell, J. R., 27 
Lying, 255 

Manifest vs. latent, 60 
Masturbation, 168, 258 
Mental surgery, 267 
Meredith, George, 20, 39 
Metabolism, 266 
Montessori, Mme., 107 
Mother image, 141 

love, 135 
Mothers wooing sons, 149 
Muscle erotism, 195 

Narcissism, 147 
Negativism, 116, 174, 275 
Nero, 232 
"Nerves," 130, 147 

Oppenheim, James, 115 
Outlet for energy, 82 
Ovariotomy, 166 
Over-confidence, 278 

Pain, pleasure in, 186 
Parent complex, 130 
Parents as signboards, 235 
Parent's will, 247 
Peace, 292 

Personal appearance, 117 
Perversity, 160, 161 
Petit-mal, 169 
Phantasy, 51 

the incest, 138, 139 
Play, work and, 75 
Pope, 273 



298 



INDEX 



Power, craving for, 260 
Prenatal conditions, 9 
Primitive thought, 42 
Prohibition, 291 
Psychic muscle, 63, 182 
Psychoanalysis, 12, 55, 61, 83, 

230, 233, 257, 273, 277 
Psychoanalytic method, 23 
Psychology, 25, 269 
Punishment, 274 

Reaction, defence, 113 

formula, 241, 245 
Regression, 86, 230 

illness a, 88 
Repressed, descendants of the, 

24 
Repression, 31, 37, 254, 256, 

291 
Reproduction, 163 
Ribot, Th., 163 
Right and wrong, 246 
" Rotten disposition," 49, 266 

" School misery," 241 
Self and character, 646 
Self-confidence, 276 

growth of, 270 
Sex education, 167, 170 

fear of, 177 
Silence, defensive, 116 
Skeleton, family, 69 
Smile as reward, 248 
Speech, defensive, 116 
Splitting of libido, 82 
Stealing, 255 
Strength of weakness, 236 
Sublimation, 65, 197 



Symbol, composite nature of, 

44 
Symbolic thought, 41 
Symbolism preserves sleep, 59 

Talking, excessive, 128 
Terman, L. M., 17 
Tests, intelligence, 16 
Thinking, unconscious, 35 

vs. imagining, 158 
Thirteen complex, 150 
Thought, primitive, 42 

symbolic, 41 

unassimilated, 70 

unconscious, 226 
Thoughts go, where, 34 
Thymus trouble, 118 
Ticklishness, 124 
Toleration, 264 
Training, child, 181, 294 
Tyrant child, the, 222 

Unconscious, 37, 295 

needs, 233 

problems, 63 

thinking, 35 

thoughts, 226 
Unsolved childish problems, 78 
Untruthfulness, 97, 254 

Wish, 181 

in stealing and lying, 255 
Words, a child's, 4 
Work and play, 75 

defence against, 126 

Zurich school, the, 64 



299 



3A77 



